5 East Coast Nouveau Worth Seeking Out
Eastern winemakers are using a variety of grapes to create delicious early-release bottlings | PLUS: The Cork Club December 2024 Selections
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More Eastern wineries seem to be making more nouveau-style wines than ever before. This makes a lot of sense for myriad reasons. Local wine lovers are always ready to taste the first wines from a new vintage — especially one like 2024 that, by all accounts, seems to have been a tremendous one. It’s also a great way for wineries to market and sell new wines in the quiet winter season.
I enthusiastically try to get my hands on as many of these wines as I can every year, but, as with any other wine category, some of it isn’t very good. But, after tasting 10 or so examples from the 2024 vintage (by no means an exhaustive tasting, mind you) I can wholeheartedly recommend five of them.
These are all fresh (obviously) food-friendly wines that show best with a light chill (the reds — chill the riesling as you would any white wine). I love that no one grape is repeated across them and that these wines are a mix of classic European varieties and both heritage and newer hybrid grapes.
Though inspired by traditional Beaujolais Nouveau, wines, Eastern winemakers are clearly taking the idea in new, delicious directions.
5 East Coast Nouveau Worth Seeking Out
Martin Family Wines 2024 Riesling Nouveau ($20* | Finger Lakes)
I believe this is the nouveau-style riesling I’ve ever tasted — but in a region with so much riesling fruit available, it seems like a no-brainer and a potentially important style for more wineries to explore. This bottling is clean and driven by apple and spice flavors, with some skin tannin. Winemaker Phil Plummer told me in an email “I think that's the closest we've ever come to locking in the flavors I taste out in the vineyard in a finished [riesling] wine.”
Martin Family Wines 2024 Marquette Nouveau ($20* | Finger Lakes)
Plummer has been making this wine for a few years now. I even included the 2022 in my wine club (more on that below, by the way). This one might be my favorite one to date as he really dials it in. It’s straightforward in its crunchy cranberry and red cherry flavors with bright acidity and a hint of spice on the finish. Fully chilled (which happened accidentally), it’s like a winter-weight rosé, but I like it best with just a light chill. That’s when some of the spice nuances really shine.
Quartz Rock Vineyard 2024 Baco Noir Nouveau ($25* | Hudson River Valley)
Tart, with high enough acidity that I think this one needs food to be best enjoyed, this baco smells like fresh cranberries sprinkled with herbs, with just a little jalapeno in the background. That pure, bright cranberry quality is even more pronounced on the palate — it tastes like homemade cranberry sauce, sans sugar. Some of those herbal notes linger at the edges, bringing some complexity and savoriness.
Quartz Rock Vineyard 2024 Chambourcin Nouveau ($25* | Hudson River Valley)
Probably the closest to a classic Beaujolais Nouveau, its aromas are mostly mixed cherry with a little strawberry jam and all the classic carbonic maceration spice and fruity notes you could want. Soft but with nice acidity on the back end, it’s all cherry and strawberry with a hint of blood orange zest and cinnamon candy. It’s not bottled under a flip-top, by the way. They just sent me a sample before bottling.
Loew Vineyards 2024 Barbera Nouveau ($25 | Maryland)
This is another wine that has been made for at least a few vintages now — and winemaker Rachel Lipman makes magic with Maryland-grown barbera and carbonic maceration. It starts with a mix of red berries — mostly raspberry and cranberry — but it’s a cinnamon candy note that drives the nose here. Juicy and fresh, the palate bounces between more cranberry and more of that spice, with a long, balanced finish.
I liked four of these wines enough that I used them to select my Cork Club December 2024 wine club shipment (I couldn’t consider the Loew because it isn’t available wholesale in New York).
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*sample submitted by winery