Valerie Courreges Bois Carmin AOP 2019

Valerie wants to make wines the way her Grandad did - firmly rooted in their sense of place and authenticity.  A native of South-West France, she caught the winemaking bug while helping in her Grandfather's winery in Ossun. Initially studying chemistry at university, the bug bit again, and she changed to a winemaking degree. The winemaking path took her to California and Chile before returning to her homeland, where she now heads up the winemaking at Chateau Fontainebleau, Provence.  In 2019 Valérie purchased 22 hectares of wild, gravely vineyards in Cahors with her husband, Mathieu Cosse; they immediately began converting the farming to biodynamic principles.

Nestled into the foothills of the limestone plateaus that define Cahors, Valerie and her husband biodynamically farm 22 hectares of Malbec, Syrah, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot. The soils here are the classic iron-rich clay-limestone strewn with gravel. Taking its name from the vineyards’ ochre-stained soils, Bois Carmin is 100% Malbec hand-harvested from 40-50 year-old-vines. Each parcel is fermented separately with native yeasts in concrete vats. Extractions are gentle with only minimal punch down and long, slow fermentation. The wines are aged in concrete vats and sandstone-clay jars before bottling without fining or filtering.