2020 Clos Apalta

The flagship 2020 Clos Apalta is based on 64% Carménère, 19% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, and 2% Petit Verdot and it was aged for 27 months in 85% new barrels. It takes the second wine and turns the dial up, offering a dense purple hue as well as gorgeous aromatics of red and black plums, smoked tobacco, fresh flowers, and spicy oak. Medium to full-bodied on the palate, it has beautiful depth and concentration, yet it stays light on its feet, has a beautiful sense of freshness, and ultra-fine, polished tannins. It's a stunningly good bottle of wine that offers pleasure today yet will benefit from 3-4 years of bottle age, and I would be shocked if it wasn't still drinking fabulously well at age 20.

64% Carmenère, 19% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 2% Petit Verdot. Harvest 25 February to 6 April. Fermentation in 75-hl French oak vats at 28–30 °C. 5–6 weeks’ maceration with manual punchdowns. Aged for 27 months in French oak barrels, 85% new, 15% second use. Bottled without fining or filtration on 15 August 2022. TA 3.73 g/l (sulphuric), pH 3.71, RS 2.55 g/l. 9,725 cases produced. Slightly spirity on the nose, with heady kirsch tones at the core. Chocolate, mint and damsons follow on the palate, together with a chalky grip of stern tannins. Very sweet to the finish, perhaps lacking some balancing freshness. (TP)

Enticing layers of tobacco, cocoa bean, redcurrant, blackberry and pomegranate. There are good acidities also to support the spicy core of toasted oak, cloves, liqourice, cigar box, Provence herbs, and soft, supple tannins. Small berries in this hot vintage (around two weeks ahead of average throughout the growing season) mean clear concentration and a lot of body, and the bell pepper and eucalyptus notes of this Carmanère-dominant wine are extremely welcome. Harvest finished on March 6, the earliest on record. Ageing in a mix of new and second-use barrels, with a long light toasting (this ageing changed as of the 2017 vintage, bringing down levels of new oak to 85%), 3.71ph, unfiltered and unfined. There has been a change to the bottles also, lowering their weight and ensuring they are produced in Chile itself. Old vines dating back to 1907.