Here in France it is traditional to celebrate the arrival of les vins primeurs – the most famous of which is the ‘Beaujolais nouveau‘ – on the third Thursday of November. It seems that this year our attention has been on politics and past terrorist acts rather than festivities around the young wines. There’s been barely a ripple in the news and even in the shops I’ve seen little noise around les vins nouveaux.
To be fair, the French are not crazy about young wines, believing that they give you a headache, and tend to view the whole Beaujolais Nouveau craze as a marketing scheme to attract foreigners. It has certainly been more successful overseas.
I happen to enjoy the young wines of the Beaujolais and the Rhône valley and over the years have been an avid consumer of our local produce.
A few kilometres away from our former hometown in the Monts du Lyonnais was the village of Taluyers. The road to that town had but one attraction for us, but one that kept us coming back regularly for years: Le Domaine de Prapin, a grower of the wine called Coteaux du Lyonnais. The Chardonnay whites were truly magical, the still hand-pressed Gamay reds pleasantly fruity. Best of all, we discovered that you could buy directly from the producer. Our car beat a path to their door on many weekends.
We were delighted to learn that you could buy the wine in bulk, en vrac, in a box container with a vacuum-packed bag inside, to keep the wine from spoiling (chance would be a fine thing), and a handy spout for serving. What the English pragmatically referred to as a bag-in-a-box, they simply called une outre, the term loosely referring to a traditional wine skin.
Not only was it more economical to buy the wine this way, it was a relief to have fewer bottles to dispose of. Glass is recycled in collective containers on street corners in France, and there were times when I was tempted to take out our recycling by cover of night – if it weren’t for the noise. Our empties made a satisfying smash as they landed in the container but it was impossible to get rid of them discreetly. I felt as if I should wear a sign that said ‘I am not an alcoholic, I support the local produce’.
In a comedic quirk of the French language, the word ‘outrer’ means to push to the limits of the acceptable, to the outrageous or outlandish. When we ran out of wine, my husband would joke that we were ‘outrés’ and make a quick run over to Prapin.
Outrageous.
Have you enjoyed any of this year’s vins nouveaux? Do you care whether your wine comes from a bottle or a box?
Every year on the third Thursday in November, corks can be heard popping around the world to herald the advent of the newborn baby Beaujolais.
Raise your glasses, mesdames et messieurs, le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!
Ironically, the country where the fewest guests actually show up to the party is France. The whole Beaujolais Nouveau fever has never really caught on here, outside of the Beaujolais wine-growing region itself.
Apparently the party is the biggest in Japan, which gets the most bottles and special permission to start the festivities several hours ahead.
I’ve always been a sucker for a good marketing coup, and Beaujolais Nouveau is a great example. I love the excitement around the opening of the first bottle, which can legally only happen at 12:01 a.m. on B-Day. I like the fun and festivities of ringing in a young, upstart wine that’s served chilled and not to be taken seriously. One of my most sour grapes is wine snobbery.
But the French are resistant to marketing and all things commercial. They are also not fans of young wines in general or Beaujolais in particular. The Gamay grape is too lightweight for the French palate, which shows a marked preference for the fuller-bodied Bordeaux. They tend to prefer a mature wine which has fait ses preuves – or stood the test of time.
And the fact is that Beaujolais is not the only wine to be born on this day. A whole host of vins nouveaux or vins primeurs (young wines) from regions all over France will be released around the same time (not to be confused with the wines en primeur, a whole other deal where buyers invest in wine futures or the nouveauxcrus before their value is officially defined).
For the past few years the marketing minds behind Beaujolais Nouveau have been trying to reposition it as a highly fashionable affair going shoulder to shoulder with French haute couture. Personally I believe this is a mistake as it goes against the very grain of the light-hearted nouveaux wines and tries to give it a serious air.
This year marks the first time a Mademoiselle Beaujolais Nouveau has been crowned and will participate in Thursday’s events. Young (21), pretty and wearing a ruby red robe, she will be the personification of Beaujolais Nouveau itself.
Here’s hoping it’s a good year – and if not, a good party. Tchin!
“Du pain, du vin, du Boursin…” This slogan for a popular brand of cream cheese (my personal favorite is Boursin au poivre), reveres one of the exquisite pleasures of French life – bread, cheese and wine. Probably why these spots became a cult favorite here.
Wine – the tradition and availability of the grape – is one of the undisputed advantages of living in France. Yet despite, or perhaps because of, the immense history of the vine and the huge variety of vintages, buying wine can be rather compliqué.
Wine brings together art and science, simplicity and snobbery, geography, meteorology, sense and, several glasses later, insensibility. Winemaking was the original biotechnology. It’s a complex subject. And this is a country where people enjoy all of those things.
I appreciate the interest that wine connoisseurs and historians take in understanding the finer points of the noble grape. But sometimes, fairly often in fact, I just want to buy a nice bottle of red. Not something that will knock your socks off. Or a grand vin that requires careful decanting. Just a good, basic wine.
While good French wines are very good indeed, the lowly vins de table can be barely drinkable. The challenge, in my view, is finding a reliably good wine for everyday consumption. There’s nothing more disappointing than to be served a glass of watery red or a white with notes of lighter fluid in a country whose wine-making tradition is epic.
The fact is, you can spend a lot of money on a wine whose value is determined not by how good it tastes but by where it came from. There is no quality-price guarantee with wine. A cheaper bottle can taste much better than a higher-priced one.
Sometimes we’ll go to a good restaurant, fall into the sommelier’s hands, spend more than we intended and find the wine, well, uninspired.
That’s when I feel the sour grapes coming on. But far be it from me to whine. Instead, I put together this fool-proof guide to buying wine in France:
Forget the rules Why should you let someone else dictate what’s good for you? If you like red wine and want to have it with fish, go for it! Who cares what the wine snobs say? I like Merlot, critics be damned! And no matter what anyone else says, I don’t care for the sweeter whites. So there. The first (and only) rule is: please yourself. (This article says it better than I could.)
Know thy wine-growing regions Everything you could possibly need to know about French wines is summarized very nicely here. So I won’t repeat it. But pay attention to where the wine is from. This is the only thing you need to know. French wines are identified by their origin, not the grape, but there is a correpondance between the two. Personally, I like the Côtes du Rhone, which are more accessible (price and taste-wise) than the stuffier Bordeaux and temperamental Bourgognes.
Don’t buy wine from supermarkets This is a ‘do as a I say, not as I do’ guideline (like parental advice, meant to be ignored much of the time). So don’t buy wine at the supermarket, unless:
a) You’ve studied the wine guides and have the inside edge on which ones to buy
b) You have a tried-and-true favorite that’s regularly available on your local supermarket shelves
c) You have no other choice
Obviously, bad and/or overpriced wine is better than no wine.
Find a local ‘caviste’ Why not let someone else do the work for you? The specialty retailler will preselect good value wines and make them available to you, the customer, at a reasonable price. He or she will also be a source of advice if you want to expand your palate, or offer a special bottle as a gift.
Think global, drink local As a general rule, we always try and drink the local vintage. Why? The less industrialized and more natural a wine is, the better it will be. French wisdom has it that it’s ‘plus sain’ (healthier) to drink a simple wine grown and bottled at the local vineyard than one that’s been blended and added to and shipped around the world.
The down side of that is that the offering of anything but French wine in France is poor. You will find a few basic Italian and Spanish bottles. The wines of the new world are virtually unknown. By the way, if you go to Switzerland, do drink the local wines. They are excellent – which is probably why the Swiss don’t export them.
Good year, bad year? ‘Millésime’ describes the year in which the wine is grown and harvested. Thanks to the ever-evolving skills of the vintner, young wines are increasingly drinkable. That’s a good thing as they don’t tend to age very well in our household. Or age at all.
Whether or not a particular year will yield good wine is a complex question largely influenced by the weather (a sunny growing season with sufficient rain is ideal). That’s a lot to remember. So if you want to buy good millésime you’ll want to get help on that. Check the experts: http://www.bbr.com/vintage-chart
An app for that? It seems there’s also a multitude of apps that let you find out what wine to pair with what food, share what you’re drinking with friends, discover wines of one region or brand…all fairly useless IMHO.
How about a ‘wine advisor’ rating of vintages and millésimes with a label scanner? Actually, no, what I really want is a divining rod, that will let me pick up a bottle and just know that it will please me. That it won’t be corked. That I will have a good quality price experience. And a good time drinking it.
We were delighted to learn that you could buy the wine in bulk, en vrac, in a box container with a vacuum-packed bag inside, to keep the wine from spoiling (chance would be a fine thing), and a handy spout for serving. What the English pragmatically referred to as a bag-in-a-box, they simply called une outre, the term loosely referring to a traditional wine skin.
FranceSays 
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