Winemaker Notes
Dark and deep inky purple red color. Still young, but opening on the nose towards ripe and expressive red and black fruit, such as plums, red cherries, dry figs and blueberries. Also, spices such as vanilla, clover and white pepper. With a concentrated structure, this wine has a round and packed attack followed by velvety and polished tannins filling the mid palate and a ripe and rich long lasting finish.
Open and leave to breathe for a couple of hours or carefully decant for minimum 1 hour and enjoy at room temperature; 16 to 18ºC (60 to 65°F). This wine is an ideal companion for game, lamb, and entrecote fillet. Also good with rich cocoa chocolate deserts.
Blend: 71% Carmenere, 18% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Merlot
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
The aromas in this wine are phenomenal with slate, blackberry, blue granite and lead pencil. Violet too. Full body, with seamless tannins and dense and reserved structure. It needs about three or four years to soften. 100% new wood and aged 26 months. From 71% carmenere, 15% cabernet sauvignon, and 11% merlot. From biodynamically grown grapes.
-
Wine Spectator
Big and rich, this red is filled with powerful flavors of blackberry, dark currant, black olive and dark chocolate that are built on an ironclad frame. Notes of cocoa powder and cream chime in as well, and the muscular finish lingers with hints of savory herb. Carmenère, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Best from 2014 through 2022.
-
Wine Enthusiast
Alluring aromas of cigar box, cedar shavings, olive and berry fruits are magnetic with this Carmenère-led blend. In its youth, it is pushy and vibrant in the mouth. Flavors of tobacco, chocolate and leafy, lightly herbal berry fruits finish smooth, long and with just enough acidic cut. Drink through 2022.
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
The 2010 Lapostolle Clos Apalta is quite a luxurious red wine. Layered, with loads of ripe fruit and oak, this wine shows plenty of tannins still. The wine's lasting richness makes it a superb candidate with well-charred beef. Drinking well now. (Tasted: August 18, 2016, San Francisco, CA)
Clos Apalta is a state-of-the-art winery built to amplify Apalta's unique terroir through a lens of legendary French winemaking expertise. Under the watchful eye of Charles-Henri de Bournet and winemaker Andrea Leon, Clos Apalta remains among South America's most iconic producers.
The revolutionary six-story winery is built into the granite hillside of 'The Clos' in the proportions of the Golden Ratio, representing perfect natural equilibrium. In this way, the winery itself is an element of their minimal-intervention winemaking philosophy: hand harvesting, gentle extraction, wild yeast fermentation, minimal filtration, and 100% gravity-fed from the sorting table to the cellar.
“My mother, Alexandra Marnier Lapostolle, always dreamt of crafting the perfect wine. She spent years in search of an exceptional terroir to create a unique wine which would come to take its place as one of the best in the world. Having crossed several continents, she found the picture-perfect location of the Apalta Valley. She let the rolling mountains and sunlit air of the Apalta Valley speak to her, guessed the extraordinary potential, and tamed it. Clos Apalta was thus born, an enchanting wine with a shimmering texture and complexity that stimulates the senses and excites the imagination.” - Charles-Henri de Bournet
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Well-regarded for intense and exceptionally high quality red wines, the Colchagua Valley is situated in the southern part of Chile’s Rapel Valley, with many of the best vineyards lying in the foothills of the Coastal Range.
Heavy French investment and cutting-edge technology in both the vineyard and the winery has been a boon to the local viticultural industry, which already laid claim to ancient vines and a textbook Mediterranean climate.
The warm, dry growing season in the Colchagua Valley favors robust reds made from Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenère, Malbec and Syrah—in fact, some of Chile’s very best are made here. A small amount of good white wine is produced from Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc.