Beaujolais Nouveau

Mercifully, we rarely seem to hear about Beaujolais nouveau these days.

In the 1980s and 90s, the amount of hyperbole that surrounded its release on the third Thursday in November each year reached levels that were quite ridiculous. It was a phenomenon of the Yuppie era – like the Filofax and red braces.

I am not a fan of Beaujolais myself, and I never saw the attraction. In fact I've long been convinced that the people who rushed to buy the first Beaujolais nouveau each year were just flaunting their ignorance, or simply looking for an opportunity to get drunk – or quite possibly both.

It's true that Beaujolais is known to be a wine that can be drunk young. I would suggest however that this is a matter of taste, and for me, a wine that's had a couple of years to mature will always taste better than one that's been rushed to the table as soon as possible after the harvest. The thing I could never understand was the implied assumption that the new Beaujolais would be intrinsically better than last year's vintage, which has been maturing for twelve months.

Wikipedia explains that Beaujolais traditionally made a vin de l'annee (wine of the year) to celebrate the end of the harvest. From 1937, when Beaujolais gained AOC status, they weren't allowed to drink it until 15 December, but in 1951 the rules were relaxed and the Beaujolais wine makers' union (the UIVB) set 15 November as the day when they would start celebrating each year.

So far, so good. Nothing wrong, as far as I'm concerned, with the workers letting their hair down when the harvest is complete.

Before long however (and here's the rub) the UIVB saw a marketing opportunity. They started with a race to get the first bottles to Paris, and "by the 1970s it had become a national event."

Wikipedia goes on to describe how English clubs held competitions in the 1960s to see who could get the Beaujolais nouveau back first. In 1972, New York and Minneapolis became the first American cities to import it; other European countries followed suit in the 1980s, and Asia in the 90s.

By this time, as I've suggested above, the annual Beaujolais nouveau release was gaining blanket coverage in the British media. But thankfully they eventually grew tired of it, and (as I've also suggested above) we hardly notice it these days, if at all.

I rarely drink wine on a Thursday, but on the third Friday in November this year I shall probably be opening a bottle of 2018 Shiraz, or a 2017 Rioja.