#210 B-Day, Beaujolais Nouveau

The human being is stupid.  How we can say that we have evolved from apes is beyond me when we continue to do absurd and disgusting things?  Take, for example, when we blow our nose.  We know that there is nothing good coming out of our nostrils and into the tissue, but we still have to take a peek when we are done.

If we open the fridge and find a bottle of milk that has started to go lumpy, not content with simply pouring it down the sink, we have to take the cap off the bottle and have a sniff first, when we know full well that the solids in the bottle indicate that it has gone off. 

And every year, we wine buffs will try Beaujolais Nouveau, knowing full well that it is going to be crap. 

The thing is, we know it isn’t going to be good, and that is is going to be all confected sweet fruit and bubblegum, which, for the record, the 2009 vintage continues the tradition admirably, but I figured out the problem with this wine, and it is not due to it’s quality.  It is to do with the calendar!

For those of you who might not know, Beaujolais Nouveau is the first wine of the year’s vintage from France.  The Gamay grapes were picked a couple of months ago and have spent just a few weeks fermenting, and the wine is released for sale on the third Thursday of November.  The grapes undergo carbonic maceration, where the juice ferments inside the whole grapes to produce a fruity, low tannin wine, but a side effect is that it is very confected and is not, by any means, a fine wine! 

The nose on the 2009 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau, is all about bubblegum and strawberry Chewits!  You expect, and get, confected fruit on the palate, but this 2009 has a hint of structure! It is pretty clean on the finish, with just a bit more of the strawberry candy which spoils things a bit.  It is not a terrible vintage of this wine, and though it isn’t worth the £10 price point, it is pleasant enough. Which brings me back to the problem with Beaujolais Nouveau.

The aim of Nouveau is to sell a young wine to be drunk young.  The problem is, they are trying to do it in winter!  If it was a lovely sunny day and you chilled down the Nouveau a few degrees, you would drink this ad nausiam throughout the summer! Looking outside on this third Thursday of November, it is raining, and cold, and miserable and you need something bigger and chunkier!  Someone pass the port..