Grand Noir de la Calmette

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

Grand Noir de la Calmette, hardly deserves a name that suggests it is the great black grape variety of the bouschet experimental vine-breeding station, Domaine de la Calmette. Bred from Petit Bouschet and the common aramon, it has a very high yield and, from its teinturier parent, red flesh (although not as red as Alicante Bouschet’s). Often known simply as Grand Noir, it was widely planted in France until the 1920s and is now almost extinct there. See also gran negro.