What began as a local celebratory drink to mark the end of the harvest, poured out of large jugs, and consumed in copious quantities by vineyard and winery workers, has now become a huge economic success, with millions of cases being shipped around the globe each November. Almost half of the grapes grown in the Beaujolais region now go into making Beaujolais Nouveau. It’s amazing to think that the grapes were still hanging on the vines a few short weeks before the wine is enjoyed by millions of people around the world.
Georges Duboeuf Helped Put Beaujolais Nouveau on the Map
Beaujolais Nouveau is the most famous “vin de primeur” in the world. Giant Beaujolais producer, Georges Duboeuf, is largely responsible for the young wine’s rise to fame. He came up with an idea to capitalize on the growing popularity of the wine by challenging other producers of Beaujolais Nouveau to a race to see who could be the first to get their newly fermented wine to the Paris market. By the 1980‘s the race had become somewhat of a huge deal and, in 1985, the third Thursday of November became the official release date of Beaujolais Nouveau.
Beaujolais, the wine producing region in the east central area of France, is technically part of Burgundy. However, its winemaking practices, grapes, soil composition, and even climate are quite different. Most of the wine produced in Beaujolais is made from the grape Gamay Noir à Jus Blanc (black Gamay with white juice), known simply as Gamay, and undergoes carbonic or semicarbonic maceration.