Winemaker Notes
Deep ruby red color with purple edges. Complex nose opening towards ripe and expressive fruit, such as blackberry, blueberry, cassis and dry figs. Spices such as clove, black pepper and a touch of lavender. Intense, smooth a silky structure filling the mid palate with a ripe and unique personality. Black fruit such as blackberry and blueberry with a long and slightly smoked finish.
Open and leave to breathe for a couple of hours or carefully decant for minimum 1 hour or age for several years. Enjoy at 17ºC (64°F). Ideal companion for wagyu beef in wine reduction, deer with Jerusalem artichoke and boeuf bourguinon.
Blend: 70% Carmenère, 21% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Merlot, 2% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Fabulous dark berry, blueberry and fresh herb character. Full body, dense and layered with blackberry and chocolate. Hazelnut and dark fruit, too. Soft and pretty tannins with great intensity. A blend of 70% carmenere, 21% cabernet sauvignon, 7% merlot and 2% petit verdot. Drink or hold.
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Wine Enthusiast
Right away, aromas of spicy black fruits, balsam wood, clove and earth announce a special wine of extra high quality. In the mouth, this is ripe and concentrated (even for a cool year) and ideally balanced. Dark oaky spicy blackberry flavors finish flush, toasty and loaded. Drink through 2028.
Editors' Choice -
Wine Spectator
Well-structured and powerful, with red raspberry and dark plum flavors supported by fresh acidity. Very lithe midpalate, showing plush accents of cinnamon and spice. Elegant finish. Carmenère, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot. Drink now through 2022. Tasted twice, with consistent notes.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The powerful 2013 Clos Apalta is a blend of 70% Carmenère, 21% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Merlot and 2% Petit Verdot. The grapes were hand-destemmed by 80 women and put to ferment in vats and barriques with native yeasts and aged in 100% new barrels for 28 months. There is more freshness in the 2013 vintage with some perfumed aromas under the thick layer of oak-related aromas of smoke, sweet spices and roasted coffee, quite spicy in the style of 2011. The palate shows abundant tannins and some dryness with a final taste that reminded me of cigar ash. Very faithful to the style of the bottling, with the compensating freshness of the cool year with more Cabernet (as all cool years).
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.