Viña Lapostolle (Domaines Bournet-Lapostolle)

The winery

Lapostolle was born in 1994, when Alexandra Marnier Lapostolle and her husband Cyril de Bournet, of the French family that has produced spirits and wines since 1827 and created the Grand Marnier liqueur, traveled through Chile and decided to settle in Colchagua, drawn by the Apalta valley. The Cunaco winery, a few kilometers from Santa Cruz, is the original one, where the house was founded that year, and all of its wines are still made there. Today Domaines Bournet-Lapostolle is run by their son Charles-Henri de Bournet, seventh generation of the family, with Andrea León in charge of the technical side, Paola Muñoz as winemaker and Igor Jiménez as viticulturist. The same group owns Clos Apalta, the family's icon wine, with its own winery, hotel and restaurant on the Apalta hillside, which has a separate listing. In 2008 Wine Enthusiast magazine named Lapostolle New World winery of the year.

The wines come from three estate vineyards in the Apalta valley which, according to the technical sheets, add up to some 200 hectares: Clos Apalta, the amphitheater of granite soils at the entrance to the valley; Clos du Lican, planted entirely on a south-facing slope and surrounded by native forest, in San José de Apalta; and San José, where Mediterranean varieties such as Mourvèdre, Cinsault, Grenache and Syrah grow. The range starts with Grand Selection, fresh varietal wines from the Colchagua D.O. (appellation), and Le Rosé, a rosé inspired by those of Provence; it continues with Apalta, a red blend, and Cuvée Alexandre, varietal wines from selected plots in its Apalta vineyards. At the top are La Parcelle 8, a Cabernet Sauvignon from ungrafted vines planted around 1915 on the first plot the family saw when they arrived, and the Clos du Lican wines, whose Côte de Madame 2024, a Viognier, took tenth place in James Suckling's Top 100 wines of Chile in 2025. The more experimental Collection line gathers wines from old vineyards in different valleys, among them a VIGNO Carignan from the dry-farmed country of Empedrado, in the Maule. The house also makes two Moscatel piscos from the Limarí Valley, Lapostolle Blanco and Lapostolle XO, double-distilled in a copper still brought from Cognac. The winery holds Chile's sustainable wine certification, composts more than 350 metric tons of skins and stems from winemaking every year and protects hundreds of hectares of sclerophyll forest on the Apalta hills.

The winery is at kilometer 36 of Ruta 90, the road from San Fernando to Santa Cruz, in the Cunaquito area. It is a long manor house in Chilean hacienda style, with verandas on wooden pillars and a tiled roof, holding stainless steel and French oak vats with a capacity of 3.3 million liters and more than 3,500 barrels. The family's shop operates there, with the wines and piscos of Domaines Bournet-Lapostolle, limited editions and exclusive products, and you can also try wines by the glass. It opens Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 5:30 pm, with a break from 1:30 to 2 pm, and closes on 1 January, 25 December and the statutory holidays on which shops must close (feriados irrenunciables). There are no guided tours in Cunaco: the winery and vineyard visits, the paired lunch and the group's accommodation are at Clos Apalta, about 5 kilometers to the north, and are booked separately. The same wines can be bought online at Le Club, the family's web store, which requires registration.