Rating

Wine Spectator 96 points (Oct 17 2012) A gorgeous wine that deftly balances polished cassis, dark cherry reduction and blueberry notes on a compact frame. This is structured, with silky tannins lining the long finish that lingers on with hints of apple wood, spice box and underbrush. Carmenère, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot. Best from 2014 through 2020. From Chile.—N.W.

Wine maker notes

Our winemaking philosophy is to reflect the terroir from Apalta by crafting a wine based in Carmenère, with Merlot and Cabernet. A truly hand crafted wine, we nurture our vines and attend to every detail to preserve the potential of the grapes. We hand harvest the fruit very early in the morning in small 14 kilos cases. The grapes were 100% hand de-stemmed in our Clos Apalta Winery so we maintain complete control of the quality. We fill our French oak tanks by gravity. Then nature does its work, allowing native yeasts that slowly ferment the must into wine with temperature control less than 26° C. Macerations lasted for about 4-5 weeks and during all that period we did manual punch downs to extract enough compounds from skins and seeds to get the desired structure and concentration. We rack the young new wine straight into 100% new French oak barrels by gravity. Malolactic fermentation happens in barrels, where the wine stays for 22 months, ageing patiently. The wine is bottled by gravity without any treatment or filtration.