'A chance to dress up' Swansea puts on its glad rags for Beaujolais Nouveau Day

There was snow on the hills a few miles away and a northwesterly wind was cutting through the city. But a bit of chilly weather didn't stop thousands of revellers in party gowns and sharp suits hitting the streets of Swansea to celebrate Beaujolais Nouveau Day.

- Steven Morris Alexandra Topping

"It's an excuse to have a good time, really," said supermarket worker Laura, 20, as she and her coworker Kelly, 42, danced out of the No Sign Wine Bar, once a haunt of Swansea's most famous son, Dylan Thomas. "A chance to put on the fake tan, dress up and party."

It isn't de rigueur here, by any means, to actually sample beaujolais on the third Thursday of November. Laura and Kelly had been drinking prosecco. "I tried beaujolais once,' said Kelly. "Didn't like it - a bit boring."

In the 1970s in the UK the "Beaujolais Nouveau Run" became modish, with motoring enthusiasts racing back from France to London with the first cases of the new wine. By the 1980s, it had become associated with City traders and the upwardly mobile. A poster for beaujolais nouveau can be seen in the beloved 1989 Yuppy Love episode of Only Fools and Horses when Derek "Del Boy" Trotter falls through a bar flap in a bistro.