What's The Deal With Beaujolais Nouveau
Mark your calendar - November 19th is Beaujolais Nouveau Day, the one day a year when a wine goes from grape to glass in a matter of weeks, and wine lovers around the world pop a cork (sometimes literally at midnight) to celebrate.
Let's break down this celebration, shall we?
What Is Beaujolais Nouveau?
Beaujolais Nouveau is a red wine made from the Gamay grape, grown in the Beaujolais region of France, just south of Burgundy. What makes it "Nouveau", French for "new", is speed to market. It's a vin de primeur, fermented for just a few weeks before being released for sale on the third Thursday of November. That means the bottle you're drinking on release day held grapes on the vine two months earlier. It's about as fresh as wine gets.
Because it's fermented so quickly using a technique that emphasizes fruit over structure, the resulting wine is light, juicy, and vibrant. We're talking about a wine that is more about pure, exuberant fruit character than complexity or age-worthiness. It's not meant to be cellared. It's meant to be enjoyed right now, with friends, ideally slightly chilled.
Where Did This Tradition Come From?
Beaujolais Nouveau didn't start as a marketing campaign, as many believe. It started as a harvest party.
As far back as the 1800s, Beaujolais growers would gather to celebrate the end of the harvest by toasting the vintage with some of the young wine produced that year, a French tradition known as vin de primeur. Local bar keepers and restaurateurs in nearby Lyon would buy barrels of this young wine straight from growers, and it would be served via pitchers dipped into barrels, sometimes after the barrels were transported simply by floating them down the Saône River. It was rustic, local, and completely unglamorous. This was simply just a way to celebrate the end of a long harvest season.
Then, ironically, the tradition got legislated out of existence. When the Beaujolais AOC (the official designation controlling how the wine could be made and sold) was established in 1937, the new rules meant Beaujolais wine could only be officially sold after 15 December in the year of harvest, which meant no more early-release young wine celebrations. Way to put a damper on things if you ask me.
The tradition got its official revival in 1951, after lobbying from local winemakers got the rules relaxed to allow earlier sale of vin de l'année, and the regional wine authority (UIVB) formally designated 15 November 1951 as the first official release date for what was now officially christened "Beaujolais Nouveau."
From there, it became a phenomenon. Throughout the 1960s, a friendly race to Paris emerged, with négociants and couriers competing to deliver the first bottles to the capital's bistros, and British wine clubs joined in, with drivers rushing back from France with car loads of the new vintage. In the 1970s, producer Georges Duboeuf turbocharged the marketing, and the release grew into the global celebration it is today.
The date itself got standardized in 1985, when the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine established the third Thursday of November as a uniform release date, which is why this year, it lands on November 19th.
What Does Beaujolais Nouveau Taste Like?
Beaujolais Nouveau is light-bodied, low in tannin, and bursting with fresh, primary fruit, think ripe cherry, strawberry, and cranberry, often with a playful note of banana or bubblegum that comes from the fermentation process. There's a juicy, almost effervescent young energy to it. It's definitely not a wine that asks you to think too hard. It simply wants you to enjoy yourself.
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