The Grand Marnier Heiress, the Gravity Cellar & the Century-Old Hand

The story of Casa Lapostolle begins with the Marnier-Lapostolle family — one of France's most illustrious wine and spirits dynasties, whose name has been synonymous with Grand Marnier since Jean-Baptiste Lapostolle founded the distillery in 1827 in Neauphle-le-Château, near Paris. For six generations, the family produced cognac, liqueurs, and wines, building a legacy of quality and refinement that crossed oceans and centuries. In 1994, Alexandra Marnier-Lapostolle — great-granddaughter of the founder and sixth-generation custodian — and her husband Cyril de Bournet made a decision that would alter the trajectory of both their family and Chilean wine: they would leave France and seek a new terroir in the New World.

They found it in Apalta — a horseshoe-shaped valley tucked into the Colchagua Valley, 170 kilometres southwest of Santiago. What they discovered there was extraordinary: a unique clos sheltering 100-year-old pre-phylloxera vines — Cabernet Sauvignon and Carménère — planted between 1907 and 1945 with a French massal selection imported at the end of the 19th century. Because Chile's natural barriers — the Andes, the Pacific, the Atacama Desert, and ancient glaciers — had isolated the country from the phylloxera plague that devastated European vineyards, these vines had survived ungrafted, on their own roots, for over a century. Alexandra and Cyril immediately recognised the potential. They acquired the property and embarked on their family's next chapter, bringing generations of French winemaking tradition to the rugged landscape of Chile.

The early years were not without challenges. The workers in the vineyards were appalled and resistant when asked to thin grape bunches from the vine — a practice essential for concentrating flavours and ensuring ripeness. But Alexandra persisted, guided by the family's credo: "French in essence, Chilean by birth." She brought in Michel Rolland — the world-renowned Bordeaux consultant — to oversee the winemaking programme. She hired Andrea León — a Chilean winemaker with a degree in environmental biology and experience in France, Italy, the United States, and New Zealand — who joined as an assistant winemaker in 2004 and would rise to become technical director. And in 2005, the family completed their gravity-fed winery — a seven-level architectural marvel carved 35 metres into granite rock — where the only force moving the wine from grape reception to bottling is gravity itself. By 2008, the 2005 vintage of Clos Apalta was named Wine Spectator Wine of the Year — the first and only South American wine ever to receive that honour. What started as a French family's adventure in 1994 had become a global benchmark for Chilean fine wine.

Lapostolle's winemaking is guided by a philosophy that is both ancient and radical: the belief that the best wine is the one that expresses its terroir with the greatest possible fidelity, and that the only way to achieve that is through meticulous vineyard work, minimal intervention in the cellar, and the patience to let old vines speak. The grapes are hand-harvested from vineyards that have been farmed organically and biodynamically for decades. They are hand-destemmed — no machine is used to remove the berries from their stems, ensuring that only the gentlest pressure touches the fruit. Fermentations are carried out with indigenous yeasts — no commercial inoculation, capturing the microbial fingerprint of the granitic Apalta soils. The winemaking is low-intervention but highly precise: the goal is not to make natural wine in the unfined, unfiltered sense, but to make clean, precise, terroir-driven wine that reflects the health of century-old vines.

The cellar arsenal is deliberately chosen to preserve, not mask. French oak vats and barrels — 75-hectolitre vats for fermentation, new and second-use barrels for ageing — provide structure and micro-oxygenation. For Clos Apalta, the maceration lasts 4 to 6 weeks with manual punch-down — a labour-intensive process that extracts colour and tannins gently, without the harshness of mechanical pumping. The wine is neither fined nor filtered — or minimally filtered where necessary — preserving the natural texture and microbial complexity that comes from healthy, old-vine grapes. Malolactic fermentation occurs in new French oak barrels. The ageing period varies by vintage: 21 to 26 months in French oak, with a careful balance between new and second-use barrels calibrated to each year's fruit. The result is a wine of extraordinary depth, concentration, and elegance — full-bodied but never heavy, rich but always fresh.

The same philosophy extends across the entire portfolio. The Cuvée Alexandre range — named after Alexandra Marnier-Lapostolle — uses hand-harvested fruit from organically farmed vineyards, native yeasts, and French oak ageing to produce wines of excellent quality that fully express their terroir. The Grand Selection line — the entry point — is made with the same attention to sustainability, using organically grown grapes and environmentally responsible practices. The Le Rosé is a classic Southern French blend of Cinsault, Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvèdre, made with the same precision as the reds. All of this is part of a philosophy that holds quality, tradition, and environmental respect as inseparable. The result is a portfolio of wines that range from the icon Clos Apalta to the everyday Grand Selection, all sharing the same organic foundation, the same respect for the three valleys, and the same belief that the best wines come from the healthiest, oldest ecosystems.

Casa Lapostolle is not merely a winery; it is a bridge between two worlds realised — the story of how a French family, heirs to the Grand Marnier dynasty, left France in 1994 and discovered a unique clos in Chile sheltering 100-year-old pre-phylloxera vines, then built a gravity-fed cellar carved into granite and produced Clos Apalta — the only South American wine ever named Wine Spectator Wine of the Year, a four-time 100-point wine, and the wine that proved Chile could stand among the world's greatest terroirs. In an era when Chilean wine was defined by value pricing and homogenised flavour, the Marnier-Lapostolle family demonstrated that the most profound wines sometimes come from 370 hectares of organic vineyards, from century-old ungrafted vines dry-farmed in granitic soil, from hand-destemmed grapes fermented with indigenous yeasts, from a gravity cellar where the only force is the pull of the earth, and from a belief that French philosophy and Chilean terroir are not opposites but partners. It is largely thanks to Lapostolle that Chilean Carménère, Apalta Valley, and gravity-fed winemaking now have a place in the global fine wine conversation. The same valley that was once called "poor soil" has become, through their work, the source of one of the most iconic wines in the world.

The legacy of Lapostolle is the legacy of the French hand in service of the Chilean earth. The Marnier-Lapostolle and de Bournet families are not typical Chilean winery founders: they are a French spirits dynasty who chose to build something new in the New World, who discovered century-old pre-phylloxera vines that even the Chileans had not fully understood, who dry-farmed ungrafted vines when irrigation was the norm, who hand-destemmed grapes when machines were cheaper, who carved a gravity cellar 35 metres into granite when pumps were standard, who achieved four 100-point scores and Wine Spectator Wine of the Year when Chile was dismissed as a value producer, and who believe that the best wine is the one that improves with age, patience, and respect for the vine. They do not chase trends. They do not chase volume. They make wines that range from the icon Clos Apalta to the everyday Grand Selection — and they make them all with the same organic foundation, the same biodynamic patience, and the same family commitment to quality that has defined the Lapostolle name since 1827. The seventh generation — Charles de Bournet — now leads the winery, ensuring that the bridge between France and Chile, between tradition and innovation, between century-old vines and modern stewardship, remains as strong as the granite into which their cellar is carved.

The future of the project is tied to the future of old-vine preservation, regenerative agriculture, and the protection of Chile's wine valleys as living museums of pre-phylloxera viticulture — to the growing recognition that the best wines come not from the most heavily mechanised vineyards but from the most committed guardians of soil health, biodiversity, and historical vine heritage. As Clos Apalta continues to set the benchmark for Chilean icon wine on the world stage, as La Parcelle 8 proves that 100-year-old Cabernet Sauvignon can achieve the same depth as the great wines of Bordeaux, as the Cuvée Alexandre range demonstrates that Carménère and Cabernet Sauvignon can be both varietally pure and terroir-expressive when farmed organically on granite, and as the Grand Selection shows that certified organic wine can be both affordable and excellent, the Marnier-Lapostolle family remains what they have always intended to be: stewards of a century — a family who trusted the poor soil of Apalta, the century-old vines of El Condor, and the patient hand of gravity, and who built something enduring that bridges two continents. The movement is not finished. It is just beginning to vine.