Fête du Vin Nouveau Eguisheim is one of the wine festivals that anchors the Alsace calendar, drawing both local visitors and international wine travellers each year. It is held at Place du Château in 68420 Eguisheim, in the heart of one of France's most distinctive wine areas. It is an annual event with an established local audience and a consistent place in the regional calendar.
Eguisheim's New Wine Celebration, marking the arrival of the new vintage. Winemakers open their cellars for tastings of the first young wines of the season, with market stands selling crafts and regional food around the Place du Château. Held in a musical atmosphere typical of the Alsatian wine calendar. New-vintage releases are one of the cornerstones of the French wine year, marking the moment when the previous harvest comes formally to market. The release weekend typically combines public tastings of the new wine with vertical tastings of older vintages, producer-led masterclasses, and food pairings that show how the new wines drink alongside regional cooking. Visitors can expect cellar visits, open-doors at participating producers, and a strong programme of public events. The event is organised by Syndicat Viticole d'Eguisheim, which sets the tone and direction of the programme each year.
Alsace is the only French region that routinely labels its wines by grape variety, with Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris and Muscat producing aromatic dry whites along the eastern flank of the Vosges. The region's flower-decked half-timbered villages — Riquewihr, Eguisheim, Ribeauville, Kaysersberg — are connected by the Route des Vins, France's oldest signposted wine road. Wine tourism here runs strongly through summer and into the harvest period, and the appellation also produces around a quarter of France's Cremant under the AOC Cremant d'Alsace, alongside late-harvest Vendanges Tardives and Selection de Grains Nobles.
The 2026 edition is scheduled for Last weekend of September / first weekend of October 2026 (dates TBC). Entry is free, with optional paid tasting passes or guided sessions available on site. Full programme, ticketing and updated information are published on the official site at https://www.ot-eguisheim.fr/. Visitors are advised to check directly with the organiser for the latest schedule, as French festival programmes are sometimes updated close to the event date.
Visitors typically reach Alsace via Strasbourg or the Mulhouse-Basel airport, with Colmar serving as the central base for the Wine Route. The festival sits well alongside cellar visits across the Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin, the storks of Hunawihr, the Unterlinden Museum, and an Alsatian gastronomy of choucroute garnie, baeckeoffe, tarte flambee, munster cheese and kugelhopf. Late spring and early autumn give the most pleasant weather for vineyard walking; winter brings the famous Alsace Christmas markets in Colmar, Strasbourg and Riquewihr.
