Red grape
Camaraou Noir
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.
Camaraou Noir is a black grape of the Pyrenees that DNA markers show to be a parent of Castets, with Gros Cabernet; Castets entered the Bordeaux rules in 2021.
Camaraou Noir is a black grape from France (VIVC passport 2017), and VIVC records no parents for it. Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel’s Ampélographie (1901 to 1910) placed it in the Pyrenees, in its third volume of 1902: “a red vine particular to the Basses and Hautes-Pyrénées” («Cépage rouge spécial aux Basses et Hautes-Pyrénées»). They found it in small quantity in the vineyards of the Gave de Pau basin, and wrote that growers were letting it go little by little, since alone it gave a coarse wine of low strength.
Its place in the Bordeaux tree is firm. DNA markers show that Castets is a cross of Gros Cabernet and Camaraou Noir, as Thierry Lacombe and colleagues reported in 2013 and VIVC confirms. Castets is a Gironde vine: Cocks and Féret wrote in 1886 that it was formerly called Nicouleau in the canton of Saint-Macaire. On March 22, 2021, Castets was admitted into AOC Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur as a variety of interest for adaptation, and a 2023 count by the Gironde Chamber of Agriculture found about 22 ha. The Gironde books record no vineyard of Camaraou Noir itself.
Oldest record in my library: “Camarau rouge, Hautes-Pyrénées”, 1838, in a collection list in James Busby, Journal of a recent visit to the principal vineyards of Spain and France; Pierre Viala and Victor Vermorel, Ampélographie, vol. 3, 1902
The family
- Lacombe et al. 2013; D'Onofrio et al. 2021; VIVC 2325
The discovery: In 2013, Lacombe and colleagues’ large parentage study showed Castets to be a cross of Gros Cabernet and Camaraou Noir.
The names
Other names in VIVC: Camaralet Noir, Camaran, Camaras, Camarau, Camaraue Rouge, Gros Noir, Moustardet, Plant Sauvage, Sparse Menue.
In today’s rules
Not named in the rules of any Bordeaux appellation today.
Sources
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, passport id 2017, accessed October 2026
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, passport id 2325, accessed October 2026 (Castets: Gros Cabernet x Camaraou Noir by markers)
- Lacombe, T. et al. (2013), 'Large-scale parentage analysis in an extended set of grapevine cultivars (Vitis vinifera L.)', Theoretical and Applied Genetics 126 (2):401-414
- D'Onofrio, C. et al. (2021), 'Parentage Atlas of Italian Grapevine Varieties as Inferred From SNP Genotyping', Frontiers in Plant Science 12:605934
- Pierre Viala & Victor Vermorel, Traité général de viticulture: Ampélographie, vol. 3, 1902, 'Camaraou', https://archive.org/details/traitegeneralvol03unse
- Charles Cocks & Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins, 5th ed. 1886, 'Castets' and 6th ed. 1893, p. 22
- Arrêtés of March 22, 2021 homologating the cahiers des charges of AOC Bordeaux and Bordeaux supérieur (JORF March 30, 2021), as recorded in the Castets, Arinarnoa and Marselan packs
- Chambre d'agriculture de la Gironde, PNDV Tour 2023, 'Évolution et pilotage de l'encépagement' (Charlier, Vecchiato), slide 28, as recorded in the Castets and Arinarnoa packs
- James Busby, Journal of a recent visit to the principal vineyards of Spain and France, 1838
- Röckel et al. (2026): Vitis International Variety Catalogue, www.vivc.de, accessed October 2026
Test yourself on Bordeaux · Found an error? Corrections