2017 Clos Apalta Colchagua Chile 750 ml

Welcome to the top. Not just of South America, not just of the Southern Hemisphere. The top of everything. That’s where the 2017 Clos Apalta holds court. From century-old vines, this powerful, polished red’s 100-point score anoints it as one of the greatest wines anywhere. It's a score not even the Bordeaux First Growth 2017s could match. 

Endlessly complex and supremely balanced, the 2017 Clos Apalta is a bottle so brilliant that it transcends the tasting table, the discussions, and the commentary. It’s pure art, single-handedly reaffirming to us why wine is the most incredible beverage on the planet. 

This is the realm of perfection, home to wines that set collectors salivating and auctioneers rattling off four-digit bids. A taste of 100-point excellence in Bordeaux or Napa can cost hundreds. And the 2017 Clos Apalta surpassed reds from First Growths like Château Margaux (99pts, $596) as well as California legends like Bryant Family (96pts, $511) in the eyes of James Suckling, asserting itself as both a world-beating bottle and a rare value. 

Today, you can experience vinous perfection for $125. That’s not something we get to say often. We have 22 cases while they last.

Crafted by living-legend winemaker Michel Rolland, Clos Apalta’s dark-fruit power exhibits intriguing spicy depth and floral aromatics. In his 100-point rave, James Suckling called the wine “Outrageous and so polished,” fawning over its “fantastic length and composure.” That intense complexity is drawn from pristine Colchagua Valley vineyards owned by the Marnier Lapostolle family, who spent 25 years searching for the perfect terroir to craft powerful reds. Based on this bottle, they found it. 

Clos Apalta benefits from a terroir different from the other two great iconic wines of Chile—Sena and Almaviva—and is arguably truest to the national expression in its grape selection. The growing season is long and even, meaning ripeness is almost guaranteed. Sequestered in the horseshoe of the region’s coastal mountains, the shadows cut down the blinding sun the land receives, ensuring that the grapes maintain their natural stock of acidity, which often has to be added post-facto at other Chilean estates.

The Marnier Lapostolle family’s goal was to create a Bordeaux-style estate. In fact, today they are able to craft old-school Bordeaux blends that are even more authentic than much of what you’ll find along the Gironde, because of the presence of the Carménère grape in the wine, which used to grow in Bordeaux but is now largely extinct there.

It’s the 48% Carménère that gives this wine its haunting fragrance—blackberry and blueberry aromas with notes of violet, exotic spices, anise, and clove. The ancient, dry-farmed Cabernet (26%) bulks things up with muscularity and broad, cashmere tannins while the Merlot (25%) and a touch of Petit Verdot (1%) soften all the power and flood the palate with notes of ripe dark fruit and spice. The wine receives a lavish 27 months in 85% new French oak barrels, where it develops its excellent balance and polish. 

This wine belongs in auction houses and high-rolling collector circles, which is where it very well might end up. But today, the price of admission to 100-point perfection is only $125.