Vintage Report

APPELATION

Apalta Valley, Colchagua, Chile.

BLEND

40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Carmenère, 28% Merlot and 2% Petit Verdot.

HARVEST

Organic certified vineyards by CERES (Germany). Biodynamic certified vineyards by DEMETER (Germany). Carmenère and Cabernet Sauvignon Pre-phylloxera old vines planted in 1920 not grafted. Morning sun leaf removal and green harvest to fine tune yields.

GROWING CONDITIONS

This 2014 growing season is characterized by a spring with low temperatures and a summer with normal hot and dry conditions. This 2013 winter was exceptionally cold and dry (118mm vs 237mm of rain). The bud break was 10 days late and the dry weather followed over the springtime. Finally march brought normal conditions, but the fall came with an April of low temperatures. The grape lost early its vegetal flavors and was technically ready to make wine, but we had to wait for the aromatic and phenolic ripeness. The ripening was going slowly, because of the fall characteristics: lower temperatures, shorter days. Cold nights of April and shorter times of days allowed us to preserve a good level of acidity and fruit expression.

VINIFICATION

Our Petit Clos was hand harvested in small cases of 14 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. 28°C. Macerations lasted for a maximum of 5 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 8 months. After that, we did the selection of the lots for the wine and the first racking. The wine was then aged for another 18 months in 33% in New French Oak barrels, 33% one-year-old used French oak barrels and 34% in Oak vats of 75hl. We estate bottled the wine by gravity without any treatment or filtration.