and who can possibly NOT be a wine lover??
At one minute past midnight on the third Thursday of each November -- no! don't run for your calendar -- that is this coming Thursday, the 15th --- from little villages and towns like Romanèche-Thorins in the Bourgogne, over a million cases of Beaujolais Nouveau begin their journey through a sleeping France to Paris for immediate shipment to all parts of the world. Banners proclaim the good news: Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! "The New Beaujolais has arrived!" One of the most frivolous and animated rituals in the wine world has begun.
By the time it is over, over 65 million bottles, nearly half of the region's total annual production, will be distributed and drunk around the world. It has become one of the most important dates on the wine tourism calendar and the worldwide race to be the first to serve to this new wine of the harvest. In doing so, it has been carried by motorcycle, balloon, truck, helicopter, Concorde jet, elephant, runners and rickshaws to get it to its final destination. It is amazing to realize that just weeks before this wine was a cluster of grapes in a growers vineyard. But by an expeditious harvest, a rapid fermentation, and a speedy bottling, all is ready at the midnight hour.
Beaujolais Nouveau began as a local phenomenon in the local bars, cafes, and bistros of Beaujolais and Lyons. Each autumn the new Beaujolais would arrive with much fanfare. In pitchers filled from the growers' barrels, wine was drunk by an eager population. It was wine made fast to drink while the better Beaujolais was taking a more leisurely course. (Quite something in a country where the people have an abhorrence of fast food -- hence, of course, the fact that they so love to eat snails....) Eventually, the government stepped into regulate the sale of all this quickly transported, free-flowing wine.
In 1938 regulations and restrictions were put in place to restrict the Where, When, and How of all this carrying on. After the war years, in 1951, these regulations were revoked by the region's governing body — the Union Interprofessional des Vins de Beaujolais (UIVB)—and the Beaujolais Nouveau was officially recognized. The official release date was set for November 15th -- and once again that happens to be the date this year, in 2007!
Beaujolais Nouveau was officially born.
By this time, what was just a local tradition had gained so much popularity that the news of it reached Paris. And the race was launched.
It wasn't long thereafter that the word spilled out of France and around the world. In 1985, the date was again changed, this time to the third Thursday of November tying it to a weekend and making the celebration complete. But wherever the new Beaujolais went, importers had to agree not to sell it before midnight on the third Thursday of November.
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