Who Killed Beaujolais Nouveau?
Beaujolais Nouveau Day may be a marketing ploy to shift low-quality wine, but it’s a good excuse to start drinking a fruity Gamay before breakfast. The wine is released at one minute past midnight on the third Thursday of each November (the 15th this year). The race to be the first to bring it back to the UK was started in the 1970s and reached its peak in the 1980s, with everything from parachutes to the Concorde being employed. Those days are over, but the Beaujolais rally is still going strong. Le tout France happily celebrate the arrival of the year’s Beaujolais Nouveau; more than a third of each year’s crop is consumed on the day of release. While they party, in London, wine circles’ snobbery rules, and BN day is kept fairly low-key. In fact, it’s openly sneered at in many serious wine establishments. But as with all things deeply unfashionable, Beaujolais Nouveau is ripe for a revival. Here’s where to join in the fun, from dawn onwards.
