Beaujolais nouveau

[jamesngalveston]

young wines.

http://news.yahoo.com/beaujolais-vineyards-aim-more-nouveau-071020130.html

 

[jethro]

I never heard of that wine before. Have you tried it? Sweet or dry?

 

[DoctorCAD]

Ive done high dollar meals with noveau wine flights. Ive had some really crappy noveau.

Its just one of those "wine" things, no one is allowed to open it before midnight Wednesday in the world, and there are large parties dedicated to it.

The wine is fruity and a bit harsh, mostly due to very limited ageing. It can kick your *** and you will remember all the next day long just how much you drank.

Its a cool worldwide thing to be a part of.

 

[Snafflebit]

Swill drinkers, unite!

 

[GreginND]

Interesting article. I'm in Tokyo and every wine shop and many restaurants are featuring Beaujolais Nouveau right now. It's just been released and apparently very popular here.

 

[tingo]

Greg, my wife is from Osaka. She says its the #1 drink for New Years there. They are a "fit in to be cool" society so when something is deemed hip it quickly becomes the thing you must do.

 

[sour_grapes]

Yup, Japan is the number one export market for Beaujolais Noveau.

 

[sour_grapes]

Oooh, boy. I picked up a Beaujolais Noveau for Thanksgiving weekend. Thought it might go with some of the meal. Boy, it was not pleasant upon opening, after an hour of decanting, or the next day. I think DoctorCAD summed it up nicely above:

Ive had some really crappy noveau.

The wine is fruity and a bit harsh, mostly due to very limited ageing.

Someone at my work LOVES it, and told me (and I quote) "how nummy" this year's George Duboeuf offering was. I just told my wife to remind me in a year not to buy any BN, no matter what my friend at work says!

I think it does serve a useful purpose, however, for us home winemakers. It gives us a commercial product that is young, which allows us to taste that distinctive "young taste," and compare it to our own young wines.

 

[SouthernChemist]

A lot of Beaujolais Nouveau is fermented via carbonic maceration rather than traditional fermentation. This is where the very fruity, almost fake flavors come from and why it will not improve with age. Some smaller producers make it via traditional methods, and it's not as off putting.

 

[jamesngalveston]

I agree with you sourgrapes....i didnt care for it much either....
someone told me that they loved grappa...i had some brought to me from a friend visiting italy....it was awful....

 

[sour_grapes]

Southern Chemist: Thank you for that info. I did not know about carbonic maceration. Upon looking into it, that sounds like an interesting process. (A bit bizarre, but interesting.)

James: I am just killing off the BN bottle now, and it is (finally) not wretched. (About 48 hours after opening.)

I must say that I do enjoy a good grappa. I am not an afficionado, but I believe that there are "good" grappas and ones that'll make your eyes water. I like to sip 'em.

 

[SouthernChemist]

Southern Chemist: Thank you for that info. I did not know about carbonic maceration. Upon looking into it, that sounds like an interesting process. (A bit bizarre, but interesting.) James: I am just killing off the BN bottle now, and it is (finally) not wretched. (About 48 hours after opening.) I must say that I do enjoy a good grappa. I am not an afficionado, but I believe that there are "good" grappas and ones that'll make your eyes water. I like to sip 'em.

You should look out for one that is treated more traditionally. Still a young wine, but not one that tastes like bubble gum or a fruit beer. The aged reds in Beaujolais are very different too.

 

[REDRUM]

There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out of the 'natural wine' movement in South Aus at the moment. Carbonic/whole bunch maceration, in-barrel fermentation, wild yeasts, chemical-free viticulture, no filtering/fining, designed to drink young... have had some really complex and interesting wines made along these lines. There are some great 'orange' wines made from white grapes like chardonnay with extended skin contact too.

True, a lot of Beaujolais or other 'nouveau'-style wines might be rubbish, or one-dimensional, but you're doing yourself a disservice if you write it all off! There's more than one way to skin a cat, and certainly more than one way to make good wine...

 

[cmason1957]

I normally love the Beaujolais that is put out by George Dubouf. This year's is not one of their better efforts. I had one by another company this year and it was pretty good. I wish I had paid attention to the name, but I already washed the bottle and destroyed the label a few days ago, before I read this thread.