Vertical Tasting: Clos Apalta

A Chilean wine from Colchagua Valley, Clos Apalta Valle de Apalta may be lesser known — in comparison to Bordeaux’s Château Lafite Rothschild, Tuscany’s Sassicaia or California’s Opus One — but it has been awarded perfect 100 points for both the 2014 and 2015 vintages. In hindsight, there’s no doubt that Clos Apalta is one of the world’s greatest red wines. Expressive and complex in flavor, both vintages are blessed with the balance and precision essential for 100 points.

It’s rare, even for some of the world’s leading wine critics, to have the chance to taste every single vintage of a great wine. But it’s especially momentous to be treated to the world’s first complete vertical of a wine by a particular estate. Our team at JamesSuckling.com was offered the opportunity to do so at Clos Apalta on February 17 this year. On that beautiful fall day, we arrived at the Clos Apalta Residence and met the owner and CEO of Lapostolle — the mother brand that Clos Apalta belongs to — Charles de Bournet Marnier Lapostolle. Moments later, Charles revealed to us that he had prepared a vertical tasting for us, as well as the tasting of the 2015 Clos Apalta, which we had not tried yet. The day was most definitely filled with delicious surprises, and that is what makes our work so exciting at JamesSuckling.com!

Attracted to the natural beauty of the locale and existing vineyards, Charles’s parents founded Lapostolle back in 1994. At that time, the 30 hectares of land were already planted with vines of cabernet sauvignon and carmenere that date back to 1915. Today, the Clos Apalta blend is mostly composed of these two varietals. It is interesting to note that cabernet sauvignon is also the backbone of many great Bordeaux reds made in Medoc, as well as the top reds of Bolgheri in Tuscany and those from Napa Valley in California. In fact, cabernet sauvignon is the most widely planted wine grape and accounts for 9 percent of global vineyards. Carmenere also originates from Bordeaux; however, in contrast to cabernet sauvignon, it wasn’t replanted after the phylloxera plague in the Medoc region of Bordeaux in the late 19^th century. Aside from Northeastern Italy and Chile, carmenere is not widely planted today. Even in its hometown Bordeaux, there are only four hectares of carmenere.

Carmenere from Chile became one of the wine world’s greatest stories because, for generations, Chilean winemakers didn’t even know about this treasured varietal in their own vineyards as they mistook carmenere for merlot. It was only in 1991 that the French wine scientist Claude Valat visited Chile and pointed out that some of the “merlot” was, in fact, another varietal. Finally, in 1994, his colleague Jean-Michel Boursiquot identified this “mystery” varietal as carmenere. And even so, at that time, none of those experts could say what this all meant for the wines produced!

There are currently no up-to-date and detailed statistics on Chile’s vineyards, but industry experts estimate the nation’s total grape-growing area to be roughly 130,000 hectares, where 8 to 9 percent of it — or a good 10,000 hectares — are planted with carmenere. Such a large area is allocated to carmenere due to its special, aromatic profile. The fully ripen grape offers plenty of spices and hints of chocolate and roasted red bell peppers. On the other hand, unripe carmenere be reminiscent of green bell peppers of screaming intensity.

However, unripe carmenere is not a problem at Clos Apalta, and it was something Charles de Bournet Marnier Lapostolle and his family had to discover for themselves. During our vertical tasting with him, we learned that the blend of Clos Apalta Valle de Apalta, from the first vintage 1997 to the 2004, was composed of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and carmenere, and the proportions of those grapes were unknown to the owners. From the 2005 vintage onwards, the merlot and carmenere were picked and vinified separately, so the exact percentages of each of the varietals were clear. Nevertheless, carmenere was always the dominating varietal in the Clos Apalta blend. For instance, the 2014 vintage was composed of 48 percent carmenere and in the 2015 vintage, 46 percent.

The percentage of carmenere is not only the thing that makes Clos Apalta stand out from the rest of the highly regarded Chilean reds we rate on JamesSuckling.com; to name a few: the 100-point Almaviva Puente Alto 2015 and the 99-point Viñedo Chadwick Cabernet Sauvignon Valle De Maipo 2015, which are both from the southern outskirts of Santiago. The vines planted in those vineyards are all grown on rich, alluvial soils. As Clos Apalta is surrounded by a horseshoe of the Cordillera, or Coastal Mountains of Chile, on three sides, the soils are mainly made up of granitic sands from the mountains. Charles de Bournet Marnier Lapostolle explains that Clos Apalta is a unique setting for grape-growing because of the shadow of those mountains. With the mountainous shadow casted upon the vineyards, they get two full hours of less sunlight than most of the valley. That might sound like a disadvantage at first, but Chile has so much sunlight that the shadow does the vineyards a favor by cooling and slowing down the ripening process of the grapes. Coupled with the frequent early morning mist, the terroir allows the wines of Clos Apalta to maintain its freshness and transparency while weighing in with 15 percent alcohol without tasting heavy or overtly alcoholic. “It also means we don’t need to correct the acidity,” Charles elaborates. This is because the addition of tartaric acidity is a normal practice in Chile, as well as other countries like France.

At the end of the day, the tasting notes speak for themselves, and we also noticed a pattern. The first couple of vintages resulted in powerful, mature wines; however, they show less enveloping richness than recent vintages. Some of the earlier vintages, such as 2004, may come across as rather heavily extracted. Whereas, the stunning 2005 vintage was the spearhead of the current style, which eventually led us to Wine Spectator’s Wine of the Year in 2008 — a wine that James Suckling voted for. That was also the first vintage in which the wine had its own cellar facility with the current team, which includes the winemaker Jacques Begarie and the technical director of the Lapostolle Andrea Leon. To fully appreciate Clos Apalta Valle de Apalta, try tasting one of the two great vintages, 2014 or 2015. If the two wines are too expensive, then reach for the second wine named Clos Apalta Valle De Apalta Le Petit Clos 2015, which is also an impressive and polished one. — Contributing Editor Stuart Pigott