Nicolas Carmarans
Izagues

Nicolas Carmarans makes a lot of peoples' favorite wine. This comes from a blend of uniqueness, elegance, tastiness, ease, and maybe a lot of other things, but they are mysterious. 

     The story is simple enough: Nicolas was raised in Paris by restauranteurs. It was a special time in the Paris scene since a revolution was starting among a group of the suppliers. In the Beaujolais, Jules Chauvet and his followers were making wine the old way: without chemicals in the vineyards, and without additions in the cellar. Despite a lot of hemming and hawing about the definition of "Natural Wine" today, these wines were undoubtedly the genuine article. Foillard, Lapiere, Metras, Descombes, Thevenet, and many others were making a different kind of wine with lift, energy and life. 

     Carmarans's father was an early adopter of these new and exciting wines, despite a long and marked penchant for blue-chip Bordeaux, but it was Nicolas who opened the original "natural wine bar" in Paris, and made a home for a generation of expeditious vignerons, giving them a life in the city, in the press, and a tight-knit community that exists to this day. Likely you are a part of it!

Nicolas, as well, was a son of the Aveyron region, where his grandparents had land and grew grapes. There is not a more conservative region in France, twice removed from the already provincial Beaujolais by way of the Auvernge. Still, in his mid-thirties, Nicolas had to give things a try, and planted Pinot Noir and Gamay in his Grandparents' vineyards. 

     Luckily, this initial planting included a variety called Fer Servadou. Indigenous to the region, this rustic variety mostly made up tannic and abrasive reds with a lot of green flavors, not unlike some more rustic Cabernet Franc. If Cabernet Sauvignon is a more friendly, modern parent of Cabernet Franc, Fer Servadou is an ancient ancestor with an uncanny earthiness red-berried acidity and its own idiosyncrasies.

The Pinot and the Gamay had constant issues in a region that struggled for ripeness. Despite being so far south, the Aveyron has some very cold microclimates depending on elevation and mountain cover. Nicolas's vineyards look like they might belong in the south of England during certain times of the year; they are lush, verdant and green. 

     After a lot of strife, Marcel Lapierre came for a visit to proffer some advice and told Nicolas that his Gamay was here all along in Fer Servadou. Nicolas pulled up all the other varieties, focused his attention on the native grape and the rest is history. Nicolas did for Fer what the Beaujolais had done for the remarkably maligned Gamay. For me, almost no winemaker comes closer to those living and ebullient wines from the old generation in Beaujolais. They are transparent, complex, but mostly delicious. Like the best "natural wine" they are built to be opened and enjoyed.