Back comes the Beaujolais Nouveau, bottled at ever increasing speeds, and once again available from midnight as Wednesday becomes Thursday, on the third Thursday each November. But this time there’s a difference. Some late night drinkers in bars all over France will be able to order not just the traditional red wine but a rosé version as well.
Provided, that is, they get their orders in quickly. Beaujolais Nouveau vintners are not noted for their adventurous marketing decisions and just 400,000 bottles of the rosé will be on sale, less than one per cent of the 50 million bottles of red Beaujolais produced every year. The decision to launch a rosé follows a clandestine test run in 2006, when a handful of bottles were sold in wine shops in France and Japan, and consumers were promised a free bottle of the red Beaujolais if they brought back a completed questionnaire.
The spokesman for the Beaujolais trade body, Dominique Piron, claims, perhaps a little unwisely, that the rosé is “easier to drink, a compromise between red and white wine likely to appeal to women and young people”. Political incorrectness aside, there is good reason to suppose that the new version will catch on, and in time help to reduce the huge quantity of Beaujolais Nouveau that remains unsold every year, to be discreetly converted into industrial alcohol or even vinegar.
Beaujolais Nouveau Rosé, like its red counterpart, is produced from Gamay grapes. A fierce debate is raging in the Gaillac region of southwest France as to whether the rosé should be given the status of the red, and poured and tasted with due ceremony. Prominent members of the Confrérie de la Dive Bouteille, the Brotherhood of the Bottle, who solemnly sample the vintage at midnight in their rather intimidating black and red robes, are divided on what to do. On the one hand, the traditional Gaillac primeur, as it really should be called, has been declared the best in France five times in the last twenty years, and needs less marketing than most. On the other, the region has about a million bottles of Beaujolais to dispose of annually, and the younger vintners believe that if putting them in the pink is what it takes, then so be it.
Either way, in Gaillac, primeur tastings will continue throughout the weekend, accompanied by free helpings of oysters, charcuterie and delicious desserts. On the Sunday those looking for a way to ease their hangovers will be offered the additional torture of long vineyard walks.
