It's out with the old, in with the Nouveau, wine drinkers

Rosamund Hall explains why the once-maligned Beaujolais Nouveau, a gloriously unpretentious young red, is having a deserved renaissance – plus she sniffs out the top bargains -

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Beaujolais Nouveau embodies so much that's wonderful about wine. This fresh, early-released glass made from the Gamay grape, hailing from Beaujolais in the southern end of Burgundy in France, is, at its cherry-red core, all about joy. It's conviviality in a glass, celebrating the recent harvest in an unashamedly fun way. This isn’t about highbrow expensive “collector” wines, it’s about cracking open a bottle with friends, serving up some tasty wintry fare, and having a rollockingly good time when, quite frankly, everything feels a bit bleak. I, for one, know that that does far more for me and my emotional wellbeing than any juice cleanse does. And no one loves it more than the residents of Swansea. No, really.

But what is the great novelty of Nouveau? Made from grapes picked, pressed and fermented just a matter of weeks ago, Beaujolais Nouveau is the first wine released onto the market from the most recent European vintage. For many decades, this youthful wine was enjoyed exclusively by winemakers and their families and friends in their homes and in the bistros and bars of nearby Lyon.

But, in an act of marketing genius, winemaker Georges Duboeuf, who in the 1960s was in charge of his family’s Burgundian wine empire, capitalised on Beaujolais Nouveau and launched it to an international stage where people couldn’t get enough of it (it was also helpful for winemakers’ cash flow, too).

My parents repeatedly tell me that throughout the 1980s, Beaujolais Nouveau was a really big deal, with people racing to be the first to get the wine into the UK in time for a rowdy Beaujolais breakfast on its release day on the third Thursday of November. Similar scenes could be expected in the US, but it was Japan that really fell in love with Nouveau. At its peak in 2004, it was estimated that 12.5 million bottles were sold there alone.