Le nouveau est arrivé! Today is the third Thursday in November, which marks the annual release of Beaujolais nouveau, the young, just-bottled wine from this year’s harvest. If you have memories of the ubiquitous Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais nouveau bottles that crowd the market this time every year, the memories probably aren’t pleasant. Debuted in raucous street parades in New York and Paris, most nouveau in recent decades has been insipid, weak and marked by a Bazooka bubble gum flavor that tends to overstay its welcome on the palate.

But you can always count on California to reclaim a derided wine tradition and turn it hip again. Two years ago, I did a deep dive into the revival of nouveau efforts in the Golden State and was shocked to find nine (9!) examples. Well, the scene now has fully ballooned: On Friday, Oakland natural-wine temple Ordinaire will host 23 (!!) nouveau producers for its now-annual celebration, including Inconnu, Frenchtown Farms, J. Brix and En Cavale. (No cost of admission; just show up to the shop and buy some wine. And “Kronner might cook as usual,” Ordinaire owner Bradford Taylor tells me, referring to Kronnerburger chef Chris Kronner.)

I’m all for fun harvest party wine — which is nouveau’s original intention. My question remains: Are we taking nouveau a little too seriously?

“Look, nouveau is something for French college kids to get trashed on,” says Cruse Wine Co. winemaker Michael Cruse. “That’s basically the idea. Sometimes, we make it and we’re like, ‘Oh, that’s actually something.’”

2018 was such a year for Cruse. This year, he made his customary nouveau of Valdiguie — a grape long confused for Gamay, the variety of Beaujolais — and it came out much more like a rosé than a red wine. Cruse put the juice through a full, proper carbonic maceration, the traditional method used for nouveau, which leaves the resulting wine with almost no tannin. In past years he has blended in a little bit of conventionally fermented Valdiguie wine to supplement some body and color. “But this year I just thought it was pretty,” Cruse says. “I didn’t want to mess with it.”

The Cruse 2018 Valdiguie Nouveau ($22) is fuchsia-colored, and once you sift through a little bit of pleasant funkiness on the nose, you’ll smell rose petal, watermelon and, yes, some Bazooka Joe. It’s tangy, fruity and needs a chill. Drink it as a warm-up before dinner. It’s not bad at all.

Where I’m drinking

Angler is the blockbuster new restaurant that’s supposed to be the casual offshoot of San Francisco’s very not-casual Saison, and its elaborate wine and cocktail situations are the subject of my Drink Up review this week. There’s a White Russian that involves putting Pedro Ximenez Sherry through a cold-brew machine, and a daiquiri that incorporates hearth-grilled pineapple. There’s also a treasure trove of Burgundy pilfered from Saison’s wine vault. If you can’t commit to a full (and quite expensive) dinner at Angler, I explain why stopping in for drinks can be just as delightful.

What I’m drinking

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Speaking of warm-ups before dinner, I’ve been drinking a lot of vermouth lately and have enjoyed those from Mommenpop, a label made by Poe winemaker (and, incidentally, nouveau specialist) Samantha Sheehan. Her three renditions — Vin d’Orange (based on Seville orange), Vin d’Sange (blood orange) and Vin d’Pampe (grapefruit) — are hard to compare to other styles of vermouth you might be familiar with, eschewing the traditional herbal and bitter aspects for bright, exuberant fruitiness. (All are $22/375ml.) They taste less like components of cocktails, and more like full cocktails in themselves.

By the way, Sheehan is one-half of a Napa power couple: Her husband Michael McDermott is a sought-after wine label designer. Check out Leilani Marie Labong’s profile of the couple in The Chronicle’s Style section.

What I’m reading

Napa viticulturist Debby Zygielbaum died last week in an accident involving a truck and a tractor. The longtime Robert Sinskey vineyard manager and an editor of Whetstone magazine, Zygielbaum was just 44. Whetstone founder Stephen Satterfield posted an Instagram eulogy for his friend.

In other sad news, Washington winemaker Jesus Gullien has died of cancer, and Calistoga farmer Al Frediani died at age 96.

The Taub family, which owns large wine importer Palm Bay International, purchased Saracina Vineyards in Mendocino County from John Fetzer and Patty Rock, Wine Spectator reports. Fetzer’s family sold their eponymous winery to Brown-Forman Corp. in 1992.

Gedeon Tsegaye may be selling $45 mixed drinks to well-heeled patrons at Alexander’s Steakhouse, but the Ethiopia-born bartender’s dream is “to launch a food and beverage business that provides sustenance in bulk quantities to African countries,” writes my colleague Justin Phillips.

In her most recent Napa report for Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, critic Lisa Perrotti-Brown awarded a perfect 100-point score to 26 wines. Some have been skeptical about the Advocate’s growing comfort with doling out 100 pointers. Perrotti-Brown explains herself.

Archaeologists have found traces of rice wine in a 2,000-year-old tomb in China!

And while you can’t taste any 2,000-year-old wine, Seppeltsfield Winery in South Australia specializes in giving visitors tastes of wines that are more than a century old. Writer Joanna Lobo describes the experience.

Donald Trump tweeted about wine this week, and wine people went nuts over it. Bloomberg adds a little bit of context to Trump’s claims.

The Hollywood Reporter details how the Woolsey Fire is threatening one of California’s lesser-known AVAs: Malibu.

Drinking with Esther is a weekly newsletter from The Chronicle’s wine critic. Follow along on Twitter: @Esther_Mobley and Instagram: @esthermob