Beaujolais Nouveau

Vintage: 2009

Producer: Georges Duboeuf

Appellation: Beaujolais Nouveau

On My Palate:

Bananas and fresh red fruit. Dry (!) and fresh.

The Dregs:

Yes, Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé, and the arrival still creates buzz. Marketing is behind most of the noise (who doesn’t want to throw back a colorful, flower-laden bottle of bright purple elixir?), but even the “King of Beaujolais” can’t escape the quality-conscious revolution that New World palates are marching behind. That sweet, punchy, headache-inducing grape juice of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s won’t cut it today among wine drinkers who have graduated beyond white zinfandel, even if they are still stuck on their tropical chardonnays.

This year’s Nouveau is, dare I say it, enjoyable and particularly suited for the mid-fall fête that announces this wine’s anticipated annual release date (the third Thursday of every November). No, this wine is not meant to sniff, swirl, and slurp; but to drink, and drink lots of. It is fresh and fruity—the perfect cocktail and icebreaker for the assorted fêteurs (the wine geeks and pseudo-aficionados, the Francophiles and Fakeophiles, the almost cultured and uncultured, the almost classy and unclassy, the boozers…) who emerge from disparate places to inebriate in hoards.

Could Beaujolais Nouveau producers finally be trying to attract wine drinkers to the quality of Beaujolais? For decades, most wine drinkers considered the whole of Beaujolais to be a joke thanks to the profit-minded, marketing-savy Nouveau producers (the Duboeuf family sells 2.6 million cases of wine—not all is Nouveau—a year!). But there is more to the area than November’s third Thursday production! More later…

Where:

Outdoors at the Hawaiian-themed Bali Hai Restaurant on San Diego Bay, host of the annual San Diego Nouveau party. Performances by hip-shaking, half-naked Tahitian dancers. Fried chicken tenders and greasy eggrolls to eat. All to the backdrop of, thankfully, the dazzling San Diego skyline.