As was typical of 2020, the days ran together with the result that I totally missed a very important wine holiday that occurs about the third week of November: Beaujolais Nouveau Day.

Wait, what does all of that have to do with Noisy Water’s Nuevo Nouveau? Well, Nuevo Nouveau IS Noisy Water’s proprietary Beaujolais Nouveau, which is typically the first wine of the harvest, meant to be drunk immediately after production. This is because, back in the old days of wine making, by the time harvest season rolled around, the wine from the year before had already run out… and folks like to have wine! So around the middle of November, after the first fruits of the harvest had been crushed and fermented, the red wine made from Gamay grapes in the Beaujolais region of France were ready to grace the tables and keep people happy until the other wines had time to age and be ready for drinking.

Noisy Water’s 2019 Nuevo Nouveau has special meaning for our winemaker: after taking on a neglected vineyard in what appeared to be an inhospitable region of New Mexico and breathing new life into dying vines, the first fruits of what came to be known as the Forbidden Desert vineyard became our first proprietary wine. Instead of Gamay, Pinot Noir grapes were used to create what we affectionately referred to as our “Thanksgiving wine”—released in time to celebrate Thanksgiving and Beaujolais Nouveau day, with a bright burst of ripe berries on the palate, medium bodied and low on tannins but with a spark of acidity reminiscent of cranberries.

Though it’s been a few months since our “new” wine was released, it has mellowed a bit but still calls to mind ripe fruit on a sunny day and can make any meal a reason to give thanks!

“For everyday, we like Beaujolais, Grenache or Syrah, and we like a lot of it! It's a family tradition: We would never consider having a meal without wine”
— Jacques Pepin, French chef

Notes from the Winemaker!