November 16: Beaujolais Nouveau

Noveau Beaujolais wine is released in France on the second Thursday of November. Here's what you need to know:

1. Beaujolais Nouveau is what is known as a vin de primeur, which is a Wine sold in the same year it is harvested, not long after completing fermentation.
2. Originally, Beaujolais Nouveau was produced for local consumption only, as a celebration of the end of the harvest. However, a winemaker called Georges Duboeuf saw a marketing opportunity - a way to make some money to ease cash flow at the end of the season. During the 1960s and 70s he established a series of races in France to determine who could get the wine from the Beaujolais region to Paris first. The rest of Europe and America jumped on the bandwagon during the 1980s. It spread as far as Asia in the 1990s. While there is less of a focus on the race these days, in the past means of transport have included Elephant, Concorde, and a Hot air balloon.
3. In 1937, the rules of wine production in the area stated that Beaujolais wine could only be officially sold after 15 December in the year of harvest. However, this changed in 1951 when the release date was set as November 15. In 1985, the date was changed to the third Thursday in November. The reason for this is that it is close enough to the weekend to take best advantage of marketing opportunities. The wine goes on sale at the stroke of midnight on this day.
4. It's a big event in France with over 100 Beaujolais Nouveau-related festivals taking place in the Beaujolais region. The most famous is Les Sarmentelles in Beaujeu, the capital of the region - it lasts for days. There is an annual tasting contest and the winner wins their weight in wine. In Japan, they celebrate the occasion by bathing in a pool of red wine.
5. Beaujolais Nouveau is a red wine, made from a grape called Gamay noir à Jus blanc, better known simply as Gamay. The grapes must come from the Beaujolais AOC, and must be harvested by hand.
6. The region of Beaujolais is just north of France's third largest city, Lyon. The region is 34 miles long and 7 to 9 miles wide. Nearly 4,000 grape growers are based there.
7. The wine is purple-pink in colour, typical of a young red wine. Unlike most red wines, the recommendation is to serve is slightly chilled, at 13 °C (55 °F). It has a fruity taste, and less tannin than most red wines, because it is produced using a process called carbonic maceration, or whole berry fermentation, which allows juice to be extracted from the Grapes with a minimum of tannins.
8. It is not a wine to be put away and drunk later. If someone gives you a bottle, drink it right away, as it doesn't improve with age. At a push, if you have the willpower, it can be kept until the following May. If the vintage is particularly good, it might last until the following harvest.
9. In the United States, it is promoted as a drink for Thanksgiving, which falls exactly one week after the wine is released.
10. While it may be less of an event than it used to be, with climate change concerns partly to blame (Beaujolais Nouveau has been said to have 4 times the carbon footprint as a regular bottle of wine, so it is now shipped ahead of Beaujolais Nouveau Day rather than flown in a mad rush) 65 million bottles of the stuff will have been shipped around the world by the end of the day.

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