2020 Clos Apalta
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Tasting notes
64% Carmenère, 19% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 2% Petit Verdot. Aged for 27 months in French oak (85% new). There's jamminess to the fruit here, but great clarity and poise too, with super-fine tannins and just a touch of petrichor. A young upstart, but with staying power. (RH)
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Average Score
James Suckling
Joaquin Hidalgo, Vinous
More reviews and scores
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.
About the producer
Chile’s Clos Apalta is arguably South America’s most successful estate, garnering praise from the world’s leading wine critics and connoisseurs. The 2005 vintage was named Wine Spectator’s Wine of the Year – the only South American wine to do so – and the wines continue to impress.