Five Winemakers. One Vineyard. Nobody Can Spell Nouveau.

We’re hosting the Ashland Nouveau Fest at Resistance on November 19, and I would like to begin by congratulating everyone involved on getting the grapes harvested, the wines made, and most of the vowels into the correct order.

Nouveau. There. I copied and pasted it. That’s my system now.

Every time I type this word, I produce a slightly different French village. Nouveaux. Neuvou. Neouvous. That last one sounds like a prescription medication. Ask your doctor if Neouvous is right for you. Side effects include buying wine and confidently announcing a start time nobody else remembers agreeing to.

Which brings us to the planning process.

Nobody can remember what time we held this thing in the past. Nobody seems entirely certain what time we intended to hold it this year. We have assembled five people capable of managing fermentation, making hundreds of consequential decisions about a living agricultural product, and getting that product into a bottle. Introduce a calendar and suddenly we need adult supervision.

It’s Thursday, November 19, from 5 to 8 p.m. I checked the ticket page. Please put that in your calendar so at least one of us has documentation.

The actual wine part is a fantastic idea. All five winemakers started with Gamay from the same block at Irvine & Roberts, picked on the same day. Then everybody took their grapes and made their own wine.

Same starting point. Five different interpretations. Basically a group project where we’ve wisely eliminated the requirement that anyone agree.

The lineup is Eric Weisinger of Weisinger Family Wines, Rob Folin of Ryan Rose Wines, Brian Gruber of Irvine & Roberts, Joe Chepolis of Sound & Vision Wine Co., and our own Kimberly Drake of Resistance Wine Co.

Kimberly makes the wine. I make contributions like asking whether we really need all those vowels. Our division of labor continues to serve the business.

And that’s the fun of tasting these wines together. You get to see what five different winemakers do with the same fruit. You can ask questions. Compare favorites. Discover that the person you came with has chosen a completely different favorite and decide whether this requires a conversation on the drive home.

You don’t need an impressive wine vocabulary. “I like this one” remains a perfectly serviceable tasting note. Frankly, it gets to the point faster than most of us do.

For $50, you get tastes from all five wineries, a commemorative glass, and a randomly selected bottle of Nouveau to take home. Yes, an actual bottle. The selection is random, which gives you the rare opportunity to blame someone else for the wine you brought to dinner.

There will be live French-inspired music and French-inspired food available for purchase from Allium Woodfired Pizza. We are committing to the theme with considerable enthusiasm for people who need spellcheck to promote it.

We’ll be outside, with a tent and heaters. Wear layers. This is Southern Oregon in November, and even five winemakers working together cannot negotiate with the weather.

Underneath all the spelling problems and scheduling archaeology, this is something worth showing up for: five local wineries coming together to celebrate a harvest, share what they made, and spend an evening with the people who make doing this worthwhile.

Come taste all five. Meet the makers. Take a bottle home. Give us a hard time.

Just please don’t ask what time we did it last year.

Ashland Nouveau Fest · Thursday, November 19, 2026 · 5–8 p.m. Resistance Wine Co. · 322 N Pioneer Street, Ashland · Ages 21+

Get your tickets here. We’ve provided a link because making you spell it into Google would be a terrible business decision.