S.W AND RICH HERMANSEN
Staff Writers
wine@lbknews.com
It’s harvest time and a great occasion for a celebration in the Beaujolais region of France. Apples have ripened. Wheat and rye fresh from
the fields are being ground into flour for bread. Carrots, potatoes, squash, and pumpkins have reached their peak stages for harvest. Game birds, turkeys, and hogs have grown fat in fields strewn with grains that have eluded threshers. Shipments of oysters, other shellfish, and fin fish have resumed as the heat of the Summer has subsided. Wine grapes have accumulated sugars during the final dry and hot days of the Summer and Autumn. In the Beaujolais, a mad rush from the grape harvest to the wine bottle leads up to the first wines of the 2025 vintage: the advent of the Beaujolais Nouveau.
In Paris, bars and restaurants announce Le beaujolais nouveau est arrive! on the third Thursday of November (in 2025, November 20th). Francophiles across the globe share the arrival of the taste of an unpretentious wine that has fresh strawberry and raspberry aromas in the nose and the tastes of fresh berries and melon in the mouth. The Beaujolais Nouveau should taste like wine you would have poured from a vat into your jug after driving to a local winery in the countryside of France.
Sadly, the glory days of the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau have almost disappeared in the rear-view mirror. During the 1980’s and 1990’s, wine shops and restaurants advertised the event. Today wine importers and distributors require orders before a cut-off date that has by now passed.
The reasons for the decline in interest in Beaujolais Nouveau Day in the USA include to some extent the “American First” campaigns and tariffs, although few of those inclined in 2024 to celebrate French wines would not likely lose that interest in 2025. More likely the decline took hold among importers and distributors. The emerging wine regions of the Southern Hemisphere release their next vintages about the same time as the Beaujolais Nouveau release in France. Beaujolais no longer has the first new vintage of a year. Many Southern Hemisphere wines can claim to be harbingers of the next vintage. The wine harvest festivals in the Southern Hemisphere occur in the late winter or early spring of a new year.
We also see climate changes in Beaujolais wines that make the Nouveau release not exactly fresh or fruit forward. Climate change is elevating the quality of the grapes from south of Burgundy at the expense of the fresh, light, and fruity Beaujolais style.
The Gamay Noir grape grown in Beaujolais has much the same characteristics as the more celebrated red Pinot Noir grape in Burgundy. The method of producing the Beaujolais Nouveau differs in several ways. The vineyards load bunches of Gamay Noir grapes into vats but do not, as done in Burgundy, press them; instead, they let the grape clusters begin fermenting within the grape skins (called semi-carbonic maceration if the vat is not sealed and carbon dioxide added). The grape juice gravitates to the bottom of the vat and the winemakers pour it atop the grape clusters. In the final stage, the winemakers press the remnants of the grape clusters and add the juice back into to the wine.
The full process takes no more than fifteen days. After bottling, cases of Beaujolais Nouveau speed on their way to Paris and beyond. In the USA, the arrival of Nouveau may occur after the release date of November 20th, 2025, but in time for one of its best shows on Thanksgiving tables. Beaujolais works especially well with Turkey and all the trimmings.
For lovers of French wine and food, the arrival of the 2025 Beaujolais Nouveau Saturday, November 22nd, 2025, at the Embassy of France in Washington DC treats wine and food events as memorable. Chefs Daniel Labonne, Executive Chef at the Embassy of France and Hughes Cossard, President/Owner of FoodExpression are preparing the cuisine, and Beaujolais Nouveau will flow freely along with other French wines. Wish that we could be there.
S. W. Hermansen has used his expertise in econometrics, data science and epidemiology to help develop research databases for the Pentagon, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Agriculture, and Health Resources and Services. He has visited premier vineyards and taste wines from major appellations in California, Oregon, New York State, and internationally from Tuscany and the Piedmont in Italy, the Ribera del Duero in Spain, the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale in Australia, and the Otego Valley in New Zealand. Currently he splits time between residences in Chevy Chase, Maryland and St. Armand’s Circle in Florida.
Rich Hermansen selected has first wine list for a restaurant shortly after graduating from college with a degree in Mathematics. He has extensive service and management experience in the food and wine industry. Family and friends rate him as their favorite chef, bartender, and wine steward. He lives in Severna Park, Maryland.
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