Friday, November 2 2007

Stop! It's Beaujolais Time

Well, it's not really Beaujolais Nouveau time–that doesn't happen until Thursday the 15th. But I usually forget, myself, so I always appreciate a little advanced warning.

What is Beaujolais? Good question. It is, of course, a place in France. While it's technically a department of Burgundy, the soil and the southerly position actually make it more like the northern Rhone than Southern Burgundy

And, unlike Burgundy, they don't specilise in Pinot Noir, Chardonnay or Aligoté (well okay, they do grow a little, but not enough to matter outside of France). They grow Gamay Noir. It's a good grape for farming: easy to grow, crops heavy, makes gulpy-fruity wines. The Beaujolais Grand Cru versions are sturdy and delicious (and some, like Morgon and Moulin-au-Vent are serious wines), with the ability to age for several years, and they display cranberry-strawberry-raspberry-cherry characters that are very inviting. Winexpert makes a Beaujolais-style kit, the Bergamais, with soft tannins, upfront fruitiness and smooth drinking, and it's been very popular over the years. Well, it was until we had to change the name after the French INAO got that GATT ruling against kits. You'd think someone selling hundreds of millions of litres of wine would have a sense of humour about a few little kit wines, but apparently not.

Now, Nouveau is another creature. It's not really a wine, per se. It's more of an event and a celebration, a harking back to the vastly more pagan times of French culture, celebrating the harvest and the end of the endless hard work of a vineyard summer and picking season. Harking aside, it's a bit of a modern slap-up, with the negociant firm Georges Dubouef creating a vintage festival for marketing purposes in the 50's. Still, who says any excuse to have a wine drinking party is bad?

What distinguishes Nouveau from the rest of Beaujolais wines is speed: it gets picked, crushed, fermented, cleared, bottled and drank by the third Thursday in November, scant weeks after harvest. Also, in order to convey as much fruit as possible, it goes through carbonic maceration. Without going into too much chemistry, the grapes are essentially tossed in a bin whole: the ones on the bottom get smooshed, the juice runs out and ferments, and the bin fills up with carbon dioxide gas. This causes a biochemical reaction in the grapes--they go up to 2% alcohol and develop a lot of goofy fruit flavours, along with bubble gum, candied pears and banana notes. An odd side-effect is that they actually carbonate: pick a carbonic grape out of the bin (without succumbing to CO2 poisoning please!) and it will fizz out of the hole where the stem was.

After the carbonic process, the grapes are crushed, they ferment dry very quickly, they're pressed and settled and fined and filtered and stabilised. It takes a whole lot of very aggressive intervention to get the wines stable enough to bottle in only a few weeks, and this can leave the wine a little shocky and sometimes thin-tasting. But no matter: longevity and finesse are not mission goals for B-N: fruity swilling and a par-tay are. The French indulge and people who would normally have a glass or two with dinner have a bottle or three with lunch! My favorite story of B-N excess is one Rob Reiner told of working with Andre the Giant on the film 'The Princess Bride'. They were filming in November, and the third Thursday rolled around. Andre was famous for his love of drink, and had consumed two cases of wine that day. They were hoisting him onto a horse using a sling-harness (I guess the animal cruelty folks were watching and didn't want the horses squished) and Andre wound up swinging around the set, twirling and shouting 'whee!'

Fast wine, drunk giants, and terrified horses. Only wine could bring all of these things together.

I'll be in Indianapolis on the 15th, so it looks like I'll miss out on the local Nouveau est arrivé ceremonies, but I'm planning on opening a bottle and enjoying it with a nice roast chicken on the weekend. It's a perfect fall meal and a great way to mark the passing of the season.

Posted by Tim AT 10:04PM

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