Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
Appropriately, the last of the Adams County Winery’s “Decade Series” wines is also the first of the new vintage. Harvested and bottled within just a few months, Boujee Nouveau will be released on Saturday, Nov. 22, aligning closely with the traditional worldwide debut of nouveau wines, which is the previous Thursday. A nouveau reflects winemaker Bernard Cannac’s roots in southern France, where he first learned the art of winemaking on his grandparents’ vineyard. “I remember the smell of fermentation filling the air and the joy of tasting that first young wine,” Cannac says in a release. “It was a celebration of the harvest, of family, and of the season itself. Creating Boujee Nouveauhere feels like bringing a little piece of home to Pennsylvania.” Cannac has been the winemaker at Adams County since August 2018, per this PennLive interview. He was born in a small town in southern France, called Bédarieux, in the Languedoc region. It is 45 minutes from the Mediterranean, but at the foothills of Massif Central, a chain of old volcanoes in the back country, according to the bio that was released after he was hired. “My father and grandfather had a small vineyard and made wine until 1976,” he told PennLive. “Looking back, I would like to think that I was helping my dad when I was a child, but I must have been more of an annoyance than anything else. I remember sneaking into the cellar, which was the first floor of my grandparents’ house, watching my dad and my grandfather crush the grapes and press them after the fermentation.” His first official harvest internship was in 1993 as a harvest hand at a wine Co-op in Faugères, about 10 miles from Bédarieux. While he thought about becoming an English teacher, he eventually chose what seemed more natural: winemaking. As for Boujee Nouveau, it bursts with bright berry aromas and pairs beautifully with roasted chestnuts, one of Cannac’s favorite holiday treats, per the press release. The release will take place during a “Denim & Diamonds Y2K Party” on the 22nd at the farm winery in Orrtanna. Guests can enjoy early-2000s music, a live DJ, themed games, and signature dishes from Cousins Maine Lobster, along with the first pours of Boujee Nouveau by the glass or bottle .The wine will also be featured as an optional tasting flight pour that weekend. Boujee Nouveau will be available beginning Nov. 22 at both the Farm Winery in Orrtanna and the Gettysburg Wine Shop, as well as online for shipping to select states. The winery has celebrated its 50th year by sprinkling events and releases throughout 2025. The state’s fifth-oldest operating winery, as well as the Gettysburg area’s original winery, it’s open daily. It sits on more than 75 acres of rolling hills and farmland while operating out of a 1860s registered historic Pa. bank barn. It’s owned by Katherine Bigler and her husband, John Kramb, who stumbled across the place while visiting Gettysburg in 1998 and wound up buying it. With nouveau as the featured wine, PennLive send several questions to Cannac to answer, and he promptly delivered. Q, Was making the nouveau a big deal for you and/or your family growing up? Any memories of making that first wine from the vintage? A, Nouveau is nothing new… 😊! But seriously, it does bring back some fond memories from my childhood. My grandfather and my father had a small vineyard. Although winters are mild in Southern France, when the weather was getting colder, my grandfather would roast chestnuts in the fireplace, and we would have them before dinner with the young wine he just had made with my dad from the harvest, freshly pressed off the skin, still fizzy from the fermentation, and sometimes with a tad of residual sugar. So, this pairing is quite sentimental to me. It couldn’t get any fresher than that! A Nouveau wine is a wine that was just made from the harvest. Harvest is in September-October, and Nouveau wine is usually released in late November. Quick fermentation, short skin maceration, early pressing, a couple of rackings and Boom! It’s ready to drink. It’s fresh, fruity, simple, just easy to drink and enjoy after a long growing season and busy harvest. Very satisfying. Q, What has this year been like, making these different decade wines? Who came up with the ideas and the specifics for these wines? A, Coming up with the ideas for the Decades Wines was a team effort, as it is for any new wine we are thinking of releasing. We had several meetings, ideas were written down, and we went from there. Once the wine lineup was decided, we looked into the feasibility of each one within its time frame, along with label designs and so on. There were many meetings in order to keep each wine on track. I think it was pretty neat that we chose wines based on past releases to honor the history of the winery, yet giving them a twist as a hint of the future. First Crush was as we had done it a few years ago, Heat Wave was similar to a sangria wine we had made in the past, called Just Giggles, but we added some hot pepper to it. Mashin’ Pumpkin was reminiscent of our popular Dancing Pumpkin, but we tweaked the “recipe” with maple syrup. Boujee Nouveau is the first release of its kind since I have been at Adams County Winery. Q, Technology keeps changing so many industries. What has it changed with winemaking, and what basics haven’t changed during your years of making wine? A, Winemaking is a very old process; it happens naturally, so it’s just a matter of watching the fermentations and avoiding any potential spoilage. Winemaking can be very traditional, and most of the work is actually done on the vineyard, and it can be quite a challenge on the East Coast. Using traditional methods in winemaking and vine growing, you can make wonderful wines. Technology makes winemaking easier for bigger operations, gives better control to the production team. It may be consumers ‘trends that will reshape the industry at large. At our scale, it is important to listen to our guests’ taste preferences.
