2025 Domaine Dupeuble Père et Fils, Beaujolais Nouveau, France.
The latest Depeuble Nouveau is bright ruby and silky in the glass with fresh strawberry, tart plum, cherry and spiced raspberry fruits, along with cinnamon, briar, crushed flowers, orange tea and a touch of carbonic banana. This is definitely a good year for Nouveau and Depeuble always delivers a fine wine, much more elegant and complex than most and it develops nicely as it gets air and should drink well for many months if not the year. As noted before in my prior reviews, Ghislaine and Stéphane Dupeuble manage this old property Chateau des Pertonnieres, which since 1919 has been called Domaine Dupeuble, but its history goes much further back, dating all the way to 1512, that is in the hamlet of Le Breuil, deep in the southern Beaujolais, set on mostly classic granite soils and perched above a narrow creek. Famous Berkeley importer Kermit Lynch first met Ghislaine and Stéphane’s father, Damien, for lunch in Paris in the late 1980s, where he enjoyed the fresh Dupeuble Gamay, and thus began the annual tradition of blending a special Kermit only Beaujolais Nouveau, a celebration (in the bottle) of the new vintage we all get to enjoy. These Dupeuble Nouveau wines, as noted here in the prior reviews, are from vines farmed close as possible to organic, without the use of any chemicals or synthetic fertilizers and the Dupeuble’s don’t use any extra SO2 during fermentation, they are without question some of the best vintage indicators giving insight into the year.
The Dupeuble Beaujolais Nouveau, as mentioned many times here in my reviews, is consistently one of the best Nouveau bottlings and a bit more serious, coming from hand tended and harvested high quality old vines vines, all well over 50 years old and some closer to 100 years old that see small yields and high quality fruit. The grapes are fermented naturally with native yeasts and no SO2, seeing a full carbonic maceration and a fermentation that lasts just about a week, before a short two month aging period in tank, after which the Nouveau gets bottled unfined and unfiltered. It’s a simple recipe and regime, but the results are because of the commitment to quality here and the extra attention that the grape saw in the vineyard, where the Dupeuble crew uses natural composting, as well as never using synthetic chemicals, and severe cluster selections at picking time to ensure concentration and flavor intensity. The soils are primarily a combination of hardened clay, limestone and granite, adding depth of fruit, a touch of earthiness, floral dimension and mineral tones to the wines, even the Nouveau, as seen here. Not too different from the last few vintages, this 2025 is one of my favorites, and will be a welcome addition to my Thanksgiving table again. This 2025, which saw a very small crop, is easy to quaff, again, this is my kind of vintage, and this won’t be my last bottle of this stuff! I’ve always had good results with these Dupeuble Nouveau wines, with their juicy acidity and subtle concentration, so I recommend grabbing some, while you can.
($21 Est.) 90 Points, grapelive