LE PETIT CLOS

Clos Apalta – Valle De Apalta – Le Petit Clos 2015 – Chile – $79.95 per bottle – six packs . Late March delivery.
“The second wine in a true Bordeaux sense, the 2015 Le Petit Clos is a wine of structure and good balance in the manner of their 2001 and 2006, concentrated and powerful vintages. It’s a blend of 49% Cabernet Sauvignon, 47% Carmenère and 4% Petit Verdot from younger slope vineyards and Cabernet Sauvignon from Clos Apalta. The wine is produced in the same way as the grand vin, but it has less oak and has quite a lot of character from the Carmenère.” 93 Points Parker’s Wine Advocate.

“Blackberry, fresh herb, wet earth and tar aromas follow through to a full body, with powerful tannins and density yet an agile and polished, textured finish. Much better than 2014. The second wine of Clos Apalta. Try it in 2021. 95 James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com

A very technical and precise description on how this wine was made in the cellar:
“Our Petit Clos was hand harvested in small cases of 12 kilos. The grapes are then hand de-stemmed in our Clos Apalta Winery so we maintain complete control of the quality. We fill our fermentation French oak vats by gravity. We use native yeast to ferment the grape juice into wine, with temperature control max. 30°C. Macerations lasted for a maximum of 6 weeks and during that period we did gentle manual punch downs to extract enough compounds from skins to get the desired structure and concentration. We rack the young new wine straight into 100% new French oak barrels by gravity. Natural malolactic occurred in the barrels, where the wine stayed for 6 months. After that, we did the selection of the lots for the wine and the first racking. The wine was then aged for another 17 months in 22% New French Oak barrels, 49% one-year-old used French oak barrels and 29% in Oak vats of 75hL. We estate bottled the wine by gravity without any treatment or filtration.” 
Pictured below: Clos Apalta.