Come midnight on the third Thursday in November each year, that famous promise becomes a reality:  Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! Just a few weeks earlier, it was a cluster of grapes in a grower’s vineyard, but rapid fermentation and even faster bottling brings it to your table at astonishing speed. However, while the simultaneous dispatch of millions of bottles to bars and restaurants in all four corners of the earth is an epic marketing triumph, not everyone is happy.

To start with, although fine September weather with a cool northerly breeze ensured the crop reached full maturity, making the new Beaujolais more palatable in 2006 perhaps than in some previous years, many experts believe it is not a good advertisement for French wine as a whole. In the past there has been a conspiracy of silence among wine critics, an unwritten agreement not to criticize the new Beaujolais, however indifferent it might be. But earlier this year one critic in Lyon Mag (the Lyon-based monthly magazine) let the cork out of the bottle by describing the wine as “vin de merde”.  Wine producers sued and won in a local court but Lyon Mag succeeded in their appeal, asserting that their critic was entitled to say what he thought.  

The plaintiffs’ cause was not helped by the simultaneous successful prosecution of Georges Duboeuf, probably the most prolific producer of Beaujolais Villages. Duboeuf was caught blending higher quality grapes from superior crus grown in other vineyards to improve his Beaujolais vintage. It may seem an Alice in Wonderland crime – pending the inevitable appeal – to improve a product before selling it but under the strict terms of the French Appellation Contrôlée regime, this was deemed illegal. Of course, the real point, understood by most observers, was that Duboeuf did not believe he could sell his product unblended.

Since 2001, an increasing percentage of Beaujolais Nouveau has remained unsold, to be quietly turned into vinegar or industrial alcohol. There has also been a collapse in the sale of traditional Beaujolais, which is to be drunk nine months or more after its harvest. The situation is not helped by the fact that Beaujolais Nouveau should really be called Beaujolais Primeur, as a wine released before the spring following harvest, usurping the nouveau title at the expense of the traditional product. That pass is long sold, but not without bitterness. Yves Bonnet, a medium-sized producer of the better Beaujolais, summed it succinctly when he said, “Beaujolais Nouveau has made our wine ephemeral, sold for a fortnight at derisory prices and then forgotten”.

All such nuances will be lost on the millions of people, many of whom previously had not touched a glass of wine from one year to the next, whose enthusiasm for wine has been kindled by Beaujolais Nouveau. It has been described as the closest you can get to white wine without actually drinking it, as the red Nouveau tastes best chilled, quaffed not sipped, and improves, so they say, the larger the glass and the more frequently it is filled.