19 Nov Beaujolais Season is here!
Beaujolais Season has started. I received the 2011 Joseph Drouhin Beaujolais Nouveau yesterday.
Beaujolais Nouveau is the name given to wines of the Beaujolais and Beaujolais Villages appellations which have been made in the nouveau style. These wines are released onto the market only a couple of months after harvest and are intended for early consumption.
It was the nouveau style which first gained the Beaujolais region its fame, providing 19th-century London and Paris with fresh, flavorful wines for the winter months. Merchants once competed to be the first to deliver the new wines across the English Channel – as also happened with the clairet wines of Bordeaux. The official date for the release (to distributors) of these wines is determined as ‘the thirty-eighth day before the third Thursday of November of the year of harvest’. It is not until the third Thursday itself that the wines are sold to consumers, launched with the traditional annoucement: ‘Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrive!’
Beaujolais Nouveau wines can be red or rose (the term is not applicable to the region’s white wines) and are made predominantly from Gamay grapes. With a bright, violet-red hue, they have an aroma that is often compared to candied cherries, red plums, licorice and even bubblegum. The wines are vinified by carbonic maceration, which leaves them light in body and almost entirely free of tannins. It is because of this lack of tannin and extract that the wines do not age well, lacking the necessary structure.
The term nouveau (‘new’) is applied to the wines of several appellations of France, including Macon and Ventoux, but is most famous for its association with Beaujolais. Primeuris synonymous with nouveau, but is much less commonly used.
The Ribbon Cutting yesterday went great! Thank you to everyone at the Chamber of Commerce and City of Columbia! Thanks to everyone that stopped by too!
Bob Freyman