Domaine Des Terres Falmet, Carignan, 2024

Emanating from the Aube where his brother Joel produces champagne, Yves Falmet initially studied science in Montpellier and so discovered Languedoc. He gained a degree in biochemistry and carried out a year of research with the INRA. He then travelled around the world picking up experience in California, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Hungary before returning to France. In 1996 with few resources and the aid of a loan, he purchased a few hectares of old bush vines (some of which are 90yo) on northern facing limestone-clay hillsides in the north of the St Chinian appellation between the villages of Creissan and Cebazan. Here the hillsides were so steep that nobody wanted the land – the eastern part of the vineyard had already been abandoned and the rest was likely to follow. He immediately turned his back on conventional viticulture as too polluting but also felt that certain aspects of organics weren’t rigorous enough. He, therefore, adapted his own ecological but rational approach to viticulture, where thought, pragmatism and open-mindedness are the linchpins of his ethos.