It is upon us again, one of the greatest marketing scourges ever visited on the wine drinking public, though I believe it has backfired on the producers in a way they would never care to admit. I speak of Beaujolais Nouveau. Today is the day – the third Thursday in November – when the world is awash with the stuff. The wine itself can be decent enough and strictly speaking I am not objecting to it. What I do object to is the damage it has done to the reputation of Beaujolais in general. Good Beaujolais is a glorious wine, simple in the best sense, easy to understand, immediately likeable and dangerously quaffable… So let’s bring back real Beaujolais!

Sure, Nouveau raises people’s awareness of Beaujolais – for about two weeks. That’s just long enough for them to form the impression that all Beaujolais is pleasant plonk, to be indulged in once a year and promptly ignored for the other 50 weeks. Thus Beaujolais, all Beaujolais, is pigeonholed and damned. Nouveau? A great idea once, but in raising the profile it ruined the reputation. It is the wine world’s greatest two-edged sword.

Some may claim that consumers discover Beaujolais through Nouveau and then move onto the real thing but I see little evidence of that. Where are the Morgons and the Brouillys, the St-Amours and the Moulin-à-Vents? There are no shop shelves groaning under the weight of these and their sibling crus. Why? Because almost nobody drinks them. And why don’t they drink them? Because their reputation has been ruined by Beaujolais Nouveau. Rant over. For another year.

Tags: Beaujolais