2020 Clos Apalta

Clos Apalta 2020 (Apalta Valley, Colchagua, Chile; 64% Carménère; 19% Cabernet Sauvignon; 15% Merlot; 2% Petit Verdot; 15% alcohol). Gosh, this is lovely. There are plenty of very floral wines amongst this September’s releases on la place, but this is perhaps the most intensely floral aromatically of them all. Lily and iris, violet and a touch of rosemary and lavender, saffron and pollen grains too, beeswax, and copious black berry and stone fruit. There’s a little wood smoke too and a touch of Szechuan pepper. On the palate this is lithe and limpid, energetic and dynamic and rather more saline in its minerality than one expects from the nose, with plenty of salty liquorice. The tannins are of gossamer, though they build in the mouth, slowly shaping and sculpting the highly contoured, richly-detailed mid-palate. This is really excellent.
97/100 Colin Hay; The Drinks Business

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.
96/100 Jane Anson