Nico's Favorite Vintage - 2022s from Nicolas Carmarans
After running one of the most important wine restaurants in Paris (Le Café de la Nouvelle Mairie), Nicolas Carmarans decided to sell off his business to go back to his roots and revive the vineyards of his grand-parents in Le Bruel, a little hamlet lost in Aveyron. 5th largest department in France, Aveyron is one of the most isolated, mostly populated by sheep and pasture. Yet in the medieval time this was one of the most important vineyard areas in the country, on the path to Santiago-di-Compostella. Starting in 2002 and rehabilitating slowly but surely the terraces and the vineyards, Nicolas has almost single-handedly put the Pays d'Entraygues back on the map!
Some glowing words from our friend Steven Graf, importer of Carmarans' wines in New York: "When I met with Nicolas this year at his cellar, he was giddy about the 2022 season. It was the vintage of his career and he was beaming about his opportunity to make the wine he's dreamed of for years, with bigger fruit and longer elevage. These are stunning wines of nearly unrecognizable brilliance, which is saying a lot for a legendary winemaker who has captured the hearts of people on every location of the wine-drinking spectrum. Court somms, natch nerds, aunts, and uncles, recognize the unique beauty of M. Carmarans's Fer. And while that varietal novelty is present here in 2022, there is a vinous maturity that sets this year apart. These are wines of greatness from one of the best."
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And for those of you who really like to dig in and read, we found an old write-up that our dear friend Pascaline Lepeltier wrote about Carmarans during her short-lived stint at Chambers Street Wines in the early days of the pandemic!....
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"Driving deep into the foothills of the Massif Central mountains to the village (nay, hamlet) of Le Bruel, near Campouriez, northeast of Toulouse in the Aveyron department, winding roads lead around fantastically steep slopes and through lush forests. The hamlet itself boasts no more than twenty homes and barns, no shops or stores among them, making one feel as if they’ve stepped back in time to a more rugged, simplistic era. The region is incredibly pleasing atmospherically, and boasts the title of France’s largest producer of sheep, but it is no longer a hotspot for viticulture even though the hillsides here were historically dotted with steep terraced vineyards.
Those days are long gone as people left the hardships of living in such a rugged region behind for an easier life in Paris in the late 19th/early 20th century. Today there are only 19 hectares under vine in the local apellation Pays d’Entraygues, and there is without a doubt one producer who is making soulful wines here: Nicolas Carmarans.
While running the Parisian natural wine bar, Café de la Nouvelle Mairie, Nicolas got the itch to begin making wine. He chose his ancestral village in the Aveyron as his great-grandfather was a winemaker here; his grandfather left for Paris during the aforementioned period. Starting with a handful of vines in 2002, it wasn’t until 2007 when he purchased a vineyard named “Le Mauvais Temps” (and the house that came with it) that he decided to pursue this way of life full time. This is a special parcel that used to be part of a much larger area of vines planted to a southern exposure in soils composed of schist and decomposed granite at around 500m in elevation. Nicolas has worked incredibly hard to bring this parcel back to life. In a very interesting long-read article in Wineterroirs, Bert Celce writes that “Le Mauvais Temps” was all but abandoned after a devastating frost in the winter of 1956.
He converted entirely to organic farming, with no herbicides or pesticides used at any time. The surrounding woods allow for a great amount of diversity – both of insects and plants – a natural fact to which Nicolas attributes the health of his soils and vines. The winemaking process is fairly straightforward, with mostly carbonic maceration for the reds in large tronconic vats, after which the wines are racked into neutral oak barrels, with a minimal amount of SO2 added. This process yields wines that are incredibly bright and aromatic, with a decidedly silky texture on the palate. All of his wines are bottled by hand. These are beautiful wines that showcase this uncommon terroir. If you haven’t had the wines of Nicolas Carmarans before, now is your chance.
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