Lapostolle Syrah Cuvee Alexandre Las Kuras Vineyard 2009

91 Point Wine Spectator : This rich red is marked by game and spice notes to its ripe plum and crushed black cherry fruit. Mouthfilling, with accents of mesquite, mocha and maduro tobacco. Drink now through 2018. 2009 vintage experienced a winter with more rain than average; with a total rainfall of 455 mm. Spring was dry with average temperatures, great conditions for a healthy bud break, just a few days earlier than previous years. Summer had very high temperatures with windy and cool nights, which allowed the grapes to ripen very fast, this enabled us to start harvest several days before normal as vegetal aromas disappeared quite fast during maturation.
Our Las Kuras Syrah 2009 is the first edition of this wine under the Organic Certification of Ceres. To reduce the cooling necessity at the winery we hand harvested all the grapes at night in small plastic cases of 14 kilos and sent them in refrigerated trucks to our winery in Colchagua. We carefully selected the best fruit, 95% went through the optical selection of Vistalys and 5% was hand destemmed at Clos Apalta Winery. Then fermentation occurred with wild yeast in wooden and steel vats. During the process we manually punched down the cap to increase skin contact. Malolactic fermentation was employed in barrels. Year after year our Syrah is showing a special complexity of aromas; with spices, black fruit and some minerality. In the mouth the wine is concentrated and yet elegant.