2016 Clos Apalta Colchagua Chile 750 ml

Like watching Michael Jordan dunk a basketball, this Chilean legend, made from 100-year-old, pre-phylloxera vines, shows you the heights wine can achieve. Described by James Suckling as “one of the world’s greatest wines,” the 2016 Clos Apalta Colchagua is one of those masterworks against which other bottles should be judged.

Getting to understand what that quality means can cost thousands in Bordeaux and Napa. That’s why we’d recommend this particular bottling to anyone interested in exploring the upper limits of quality at what is ultimately a rare value. For $119, you can understand what a “breathtaking,” 99-point, near-perfect wine actually tastes like. That’s not something we get to say very often.

We met Charles-Henri de Bournet Marnier Lapostolle, the owner of Clos Apalta, a few years ago at a James Suckling South America event. As is often the case, the winemaker resembles the wine: a polished and aristocratic exterior (we wish we had his tailor) concealing a burning intensity and intelligence. 

His parents founded the original estate in 1994, acquiring 74 acres of vines high in the Colchagua Valley. Vines they bought then, planted in 1915 and 1920, still inform the bottle you can buy today a century later, filling out this release with a gorgeous expressivity and a purple fruit concentration that will unfurl for decades.

The family’s goal, which Charles-Henri has helped bring to fruition, 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 Carménère (the majority at 64% of the blend) that gives this wine its haunting fragrance, like a bouquet of violets dusted in crushed cardamom and clove. Ancient, dry-farmed Cabernet bulks things up with muscularity and broad, cashmere tannins while the Merlot softens all the power and floods the palate with notes of blueberry and cherry. 

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. It’s how a wine that should feel heavy at 15% alcohol seems to dance across the tongue.

This magnificent 2016 caps three vintages in a row at Clos Apalta of what critics have deemed basically perfect wines. Today, $119 is the price of admission to one of the world’s greatest bottles.