Winemaker Notes
Cuvée Alexandre Cabernet Sauvignon is elegant and expressive with intense aromas of ripe fruit, fresh cherry, black currant, and light toast. It boasts a velvety palate with persistent tannins and a lingering finish. It is a unique wine true to its origin, a classic expression of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Drink Cuvée Alexandre Cabernet Sauvignon now with an herb braised lamb shank or a pork chop with mustard and honey, or cellar for many years.
Blend: 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Cabernet Franc, 4% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
An elegant and pretty complex expression with an array of red and black cherries, grilled spices, tapenade and roasted red pepper. Some firm, nicely chewy tannins on the medium- to full-bodied palate gives a tight structure to the juicy fruit. Dialled back and fresh. Shows the angular tannins from the granitic soils.
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Vinous
The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Cuvée Alexandre from Apalta, Colchagua, was aged for up to 14 months in used barrels. Purple in the glass. The aromas feature cassis and blackcurrant notes with hints of pepper, bay leaf and mint over a deep layer of oak. In the mouth, it delivers good structure with juicy, grippy tannins and intense red fruit flavor. This is a full-bodied, nuanced wine with a lingering finish. The cool weather of 2021 has helped Lapostolle’s traditionally over-ripe style to achieve a new complexity.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The creamy and sleek 2021 Cuvée Alexandre Cabernet Sauvignon reveals abundant notes of herbs and spices, a ripe profile and abundant, slightly grainy tannins. This is not 100% Cabernet; it has 7% Cabernet Franc, 4% Merlot and 4% Petit Verdot and matured in French oak barrels, 30% of them new, for 13 months.
Lapostolle was founded in 1994 by Alexandra Marnier Lapostolle and her husband Cyril de Bournet upon their discovery of a unique clos in the Apalta Valley sheltering 100-year-old pre-phylloxera vines. They quickly realized its potential for producing world-class wines and embarked on their family’s next chapter in the New World. Alexandra brought generations of French winemaking tradition and expertise to the rugged landscape of the Colchagua Valley.
Today, Charles de Bournet, the seventh generation, leads the winery in its newest chapter of innovation, punctuated by the official recognition of the Apalta DO in 2018. Together with Andrea León, Technical Director & Winemaker, Lapostolle continue to craft wines that honor the winery’s credo: French in essence, Chilean by birth.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
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.