Before he made wine, Nicolas Carmarans poured it: his Cafe de la Nouvelle Mairie in Paris was one of the city's earliest natural wine bars. Then he went home to the Aveyron to grow the grapes himself.
Backstory
Raised in Paris by restaurateurs, Carmarans opened his pioneering Paris wine bar in 1994. In the early 2000s he returned to the Aveyron, the region of southwestern France where his family had land and where his great-grandfather had once made wine. After a period working in the local appellation he committed fully to his own estate, eventually building it around his prized Le Mauvais Temps site.
The Region
The Aveyron is a remote, conservative corner of southwestern France, well off the beaten path of better-known wine regions. Carmarans farms near Montezic and Campouriez, on steep slopes high above the valleys.
Vineyards & Farming
The vines grow on schist, clay-limestone and granitic soils, with some parcels around 450 meters of elevation. Farming is organic. The flagship grape is Fer Servadou, the emblematic local variety, alongside Chenin Blanc, Aligote and Gamay. Harvests are done by hand.
Winemaking
Carmarans works as naturally as possible. Fermentations are spontaneous with indigenous yeasts, often using whole-bunch maceration of roughly a week, with pressing on an old vertical press. Wines age in old barrique. Sulfur is kept to a minimum, with as little as a token addition at bottling, and the wines are neither fined nor filtered.
The Wines
The lineup includes the Fer Servadou-based Maximus and Fer de Sang, the Chenin Blanc Selves, and Mauvais Temps, named for his cherished vineyard. These are vivid, energetic wines that put a little-known grape and region firmly on the natural-wine map.
