At Clos Apalta, the wine cellar descends thirty-five metres into the hillside. Grapes enter above; barrels and bottles occupy the levels below. The building gives physical form to the Bournet-Lapostolle family’s commitment to a corner of Chile where granite, old vines and a sheltered valley have shaped its wine business since the 1990s.
There is another side to that business nearby. At Cunaco, the original Lapostolle winery makes a broader collection of wines, from Sauvignon Blanc and rosé to Cabernet Sauvignon and Carmenère. Together, Lapostolle and Clos Apalta connect a family history in French wines and spirits with vineyards in Chile.
Apalta remains the centre of gravity. The family has developed different wines and cellars around it, but the valley’s slopes, soils and growing seasons run through both identities.
The valley that drew a French family to Chile
Alexandra Marnier Lapostolle and Cyril de Bournet founded Lapostolle in 1994, after recognising the potential of Apalta. Their son Charles now leads the business, representing the seventh generation of a family involved in wines and spirits.
That history began in France in 1827, when Jean-Baptiste Lapostolle established a fruit-liqueur distillery. The move to Chile was a much later chapter, giving the family a new vineyard setting in which to work.
Charles has headed the Chilean operation since 2013. Andrea León is technical director, while Michel Rolland has been involved as a consultant since 1997. Lapostolle’s team also includes winemaker Paola Muñoz and viticulturist Igor Jiménez.
The continuity is both familial and technical. The founding generation chose the valley; the present team works through the consequences of that choice in individual parcels, harvest dates and blends.
Apalta’s hills and river
Apalta is part of the Colchagua Valley, near Santa Cruz. Hills of the Coastal Cordillera enclose the vineyards, while the Tinguiririca River lies to the south. The valley’s configuration influences sunlight and creates local conditions within the wider Colchagua region.
At sunrise and sunset, the hills limit the length of direct exposure. The river contributes a cooling influence. Summer warmth and differences between day and night temperatures form part of the growing environment, but the terrain prevents Apalta from being reduced to a simple image of uninterrupted heat.
The ground changes too. Granite-derived material on slopes sits beside deposits that have moved down from the hills or accumulated nearer the valley floor. Clay, sandier textures and gravel occur in different positions.
Lapostolle’s holdings include Clos du Lican, a hillside site associated with granite and native forest, and San José, with gentler slopes and terraces. Cinsault, Grenache, Mourvèdre and Syrah are among the varieties at San José, providing material for wines beyond the Cabernet-and-Carmenère blends most closely associated with Apalta.
Old vines and separate parcels
The Clos Apalta vineyard covers sixty hectares. Old vines, including ungrafted material, form part of the estate, with variations in elevation and soil across the slopes.
That variation carries into harvest work. Grapes from different blocks do not necessarily ripen at the same speed, even within one estate. Keeping parcels separate gives the winemaking team room to respond to those differences before deciding how the components will come together.
The estate cultivates organically and maintains native vegetation around the vines. Its farming approach includes compost and attention to the surrounding natural environment, placing the cultivated land within a broader landscape rather than treating every hectare as vineyard.
The emphasis on individual parcels is echoed underground. Clos Apalta’s cellar was designed to accommodate different lots, preserving choices through fermentation and maturation rather than combining everything at the start.
A cellar cut into the rock
Chilean architect Roberto Benavente Riquelme designed the dedicated Clos Apalta winery. Six years, from 1999 to 2005, went into the project, which extends through seven levels and approximately 4,600 square metres.
Its descending layout uses gravity to move grapes and wine through the production stages. Twenty-one vats, each holding seventy-five hectolitres, allow parcels and varieties to be handled separately. Barrel ageing takes place below, with bottles stored deeper in the building.
Above ground, the architecture is much less extensive than the cellar beneath it. The hillside contains most of the structure, making the rock part of the wine’s working environment as well as its geological origin.
For visitors, the route through the building follows the wine downwards. For the production team, the arrangement brings fermentation, maturation and storage into a sequence designed around the estate’s fruit.
Three expressions of Clos Apalta
The Clos Apalta flagship has a history reaching back to the 1997 vintage. Its older releases give the estate a record of how successive harvests developed in the bottle.
Le Petit Clos, introduced with the 2014 vintage, is the second wine. It draws on the same estate setting while taking a separate place beside the principal bottling.
Prelude adds a third expression, with vintages from 2022 onwards. The three wines also appear together in estate tastings, allowing visitors to encounter the range within the vineyard and cellar where it originates.
That family of wines is distinct from the broader Lapostolle collection. Sharing ownership and a valley does not make Lapostolle Apalta and Clos Apalta the same wine: they have separate identities and production histories.
The original winery at Cunaco
The Lapostolle winery at Cunaco, near Santa Cruz, dates from the company’s founding in 1994. Its traditional Chilean hacienda-style buildings contain stainless-steel and French-oak vats with a stated capacity of 3.3 million litres, alongside more than 3,500 French-oak barrels.
This is the home of a wider selection of varieties and wine styles. Grand Selection, Cuvée Alexandre, Collection and individual bottlings sit within the Lapostolle range, including both wines led by a named grape and blends assembled from several.
The production methods vary accordingly. A rosé fermented and matured in steel does not follow the same route as a red wine spending more than a year in French oak. Cunaco’s range reflects several kinds of fruit and several decisions about how to handle it.
A rosé from San José
Le Rosé 2024 combines 46% Cinsault, 37% Grenache, 13% Syrah and 4% Mourvèdre from San José. Fermentation takes place in stainless steel at 14–16°C, followed by four months in steel before bottling.
At 12.5% alcohol, it takes a different path from the oak-aged reds. The wine brings the vineyard’s Rhône-associated varieties together in a rosé inspired by Provence, while its fruit remains Chilean.
The 2024 growing season was also different from the warm, early year before it. Lapostolle describes wetter conditions and uneven development, requiring close attention to blocks and patience while the fruit reached maturity. The estate’s work changed with the season, even where a wine name remained constant.
Cabernet and Carmenère in different proportions
Lapostolle Apalta 2022 is led by 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, with 32% Carmenère, 5% Syrah and 3% Merlot. It underwent 28 days of maceration and eight months in French-oak barrels of second and third use.
The wine was bottled in September 2023 at 14.5% alcohol. Previously used barrels make wood part of its maturation without relying on an entirely new-oak treatment.
Cuvée Alexandre Carmenère 2023 reverses the emphasis towards Carmenère, which accounts for 89% of the blend. Syrah contributes 6% and Cabernet Sauvignon 5%.
After 25 days of maceration, the wine spent thirteen months in second- and third-use French-oak barrels. Its August 2024 bottling followed a longer maturation than Apalta 2022, adding another cellar distinction to the change in grapes.
The two wines illustrate how familiar varieties can carry different roles within the same producer. Cabernet Sauvignon leads one blend and supports the other; Carmenère moves from a substantial minority to the central component.
Carmenère finds its name again
Carmenère’s prominence also connects Lapostolle to one of the defining episodes of modern Chilean wine. For years, the variety grew among vines identified as Merlot. In 1994, the same year Lapostolle was founded, French ampelographer Jean-Michel Boursiquot identified Carmenère at Viña Carmen.
The identification at Viña Carmen gave a separate name to grapes long treated as part of another variety. It was not the introduction of a new vine to Chile, but recognition of one already established there.
The country’s wine research consortium traces Carmenère’s likely arrival to nineteenth-century imports of French red varieties. Its history in the Médoc preceded its much later emergence as a particularly recognisable component of Chilean wine.
At Lapostolle, it now occupies both supporting and leading roles. The difference between the Apalta blend and Cuvée Alexandre Carmenère reflects that flexibility. A grape once obscured by the Merlot name has become an explicit part of how the family makes and names its wines.
The pace of a hot season
In its 2023 growing-season account, Clos Apalta describes warm conditions and rapid ripening. Irrigation and canopy management were important in protecting the vines through the heat.
The fruit did not mature evenly across all blocks. The team had to follow the parcels closely and move quickly when a section was ready to pick. Selection continued at reception, followed by gentle extraction in the cellar.
These are the practical demands behind an estate wine. A hillside and an old vine are only the starting conditions; the harvest still requires decisions about timing, exposure, water and the treatment of fruit after it arrives at the winery.
What returns to the vineyard
Lapostolle reports composting more than 350 tonnes of grape skins and stalks each year. The material returns to the vineyards as part of its environmental programme, connecting waste from winemaking with the ground that produced the fruit.
Biological treatment of liquid winery waste provides water used for lawns. Insulated pipework, barrel rooms and storage facilities form another part of the winery’s resource management.
The measures extend the work beyond grape growing and fermentation. A wine business also handles water, cooling and the residues of each harvest, with consequences for the estate around the cellar.
Wine at the table and beyond Apalta
At Clos Apalta, private vineyard and cellar visits culminate in tastings of Prelude, Le Petit Clos and Clos Apalta. Longer visits include an older flagship vintage, while a lunch option brings the wines to the table.
The restaurant works with seasonal produce, including vegetables and herbs from the property’s garden. The setting places the finished wines beside food and the landscape, rather than leaving them solely in the cellar.
Elsewhere in Chile, the family’s spirits tradition continues through Lapostolle pisco. Pink and Alexandria Muscat from the Limarí Valley are double-distilled for Silver and XO, with XO subsequently aged in former Cognac barrels.
The geography changes from Apalta to Limarí, and wine becomes the starting material for a spirit. It is another connection with a family history that began in distillation, long before the Chilean vineyards were acquired.
Yet Apalta remains the defining landscape of the wine business. From San José’s rosé grapes to the old vines and underground cellar at Clos Apalta, the family’s work follows several routes through the same valley. The wines carry those differences forward, harvest by harvest, rather than reducing them to a single house style.
