About Nouveau Beaujolais & other Nouveau Wines

Once upon a time, only the sleazier bistros of France tried to get away with serving the cheapest unaged red wine they could get their hands on. Somehow, since it became legal in 1951 to release the new wine from the Beaujolais region in November, the marketers have managed to create a taste for six-week-old newly-fermented Gamay Noir à Jus Blanc grape juice called “vin nouveau,” new wine.

Today nouveau has become a delightfully clever way for a barrelful of vintners, restaurateurs, and merchants to quickly to turn inventory into cash, and create a little publicity. The release of the purple “nouveau” wines, recently wrenched from the vine and stuffed into the bottle at less than two months old, has become a full-blown excuse for a party, a promotion, and a media event with the distinct bouquet of cash flow. And why not? 

For years, Paris and London restaurants have been racing for the dubious honor of being the first to have the first wine of the year, the “premier vin de l’annee” from Beaujolais, hyping it as the harbinger of the quality of the whole of the harvest. 

For many years November 15 was the first day it was legal to release the new wine, and French motorists knew to stay to the right on Route 6 from Beaune to Paris. Some likened the burst of trucks to a 350-mile-long convoy. The race proved deadly to drivers, pedestrians, and pilots, and several years ago the French changed the rules, hoping to keep up the festivities (and sales) and downplay the race. For safety sake it became legal to ship the wines before Nov. 15. In 1985 the release date to restaurants and retailers became the third Thursday in November.

In the good old days Beaujolais nouveau production was limited to only a petite portion of the crop, just for these ceremonial and promotional purposes. But in recent years more and more wineries see the production of nouveau as a tasty way of unloading a large hunk of expensive inventory in a hurry. The idea seems so nouvelle that now nouveau wines from Italy, Spain, California, New York, Maryland, and just about anywhere imaginable. 

The flavor of nouveau wines is entirely different from any other. They are usually highly aromatic, and often more reminiscent of cranberries or maraschino cherries than grapes. Some say this is the bouquet of cash flow, but it is actually the distinctive aroma of the unusual way nouveau wines are usually fermented. 

Nouveau wines must be fresh, and easy to drink when young, so many nouveau producers use a process called “carbonic maceration,” a process that gives the wine a distinctive aroma and flavor. While traditionally-fermented Cabernet Sauvignon tastes obviously different from Beaujolais, carbonic macerated Cabernet could easily be confused with Beaujolais.

Here’s how carbonic maceration works: For normal red wines, grapes are crushed and dumped into open vats so the yeasts can get at the sugary grape juice. They then convert the sugar to heat, carbon dioxide, and ethanol. Nouveau, however, is usually made by dumping whole berries into vats that are then closed. The yeasts get started in the juice of the few grapes that are inevitably bruised in the picking and handling, but in the closed tank the buildup of carbon dioxide and pressure splits open the remaining berries letting in the yeasts. 

In addition to the extremely fresh aromas, the color of nouveau is usually bright purple, and it can leave a lavender tint to the empty glass. The flavor is usually crisp, fresh, sprightly and refreshingly more juicy than winey. They make great gulping wines, especially with tomato smothered pastas and pizza. A few caveats, however:

(1) Drinking more than a few glasses can have a laxative effect, and

(2) nouveaux should be drunk within a few months. Because the wines do not have a chance to go through the normal aging cycle in the barrel or tank, these early releases often begin to change in the bottle by late spring, for the worse. Occasionally an overaged nouveau will pull itself together after a few years in the bottle, but that is the exception, not the rule. 

Although the hoopla surrounding the nouveau occurs in November, most nouveaux are shipped by slower and less expensive means and don’t reach the market until December or January. Despite the hype and hoopla, a bottle of nouveau is as much a part of the ritual of autumn in many households as is Turkey and all the fixins.