What ever happened to Beaujolais Nouveau?

I know it is a bit late to bring this up but what ever happened to Beaujolais Nouveau , the much awaited and talked about time of year. It would be the 3 Thursday in November and that would mean the Beaujolais Nouveau is going to be here. I remember seeing it on the television talked about in wine shops and on food programs. There was a Beaujolais Nouveau race to get the first bottle back into London. I rambler garish labelled bottles of wine that you would try and sell in a short space of time before you was lumbered with too many of what was normally , but not always rather hard to drink wine. In fact the annual hype was often undermined by what was normally a pale, very young, sappy, just-fermented red wine. If not drank would end up being used for cooking with.

Beaujolais had always made a vin de l'année to celebrate the end of the harvest, but it was for local consumption. Until  1951 when rules in  the region were relaxed and the Union Interprofessionnelle des Vins du Beaujolais or UIVB,  formally set the 15 November as the release date. And it is from that that Beaujolais nouveau was born. It was rather jumped upon as a way of getting a lot of vin ordinaire out at a good profit as Beaujolais Nouveau. It was more marketing that tradition that drove this, as it was a good money spinner.

So the Beaujolais Nouveau race was born. First it was just a race to Paris with the first bottles of the new vintage. This got more and more coverage in the media and it grew. By the 70s it was a national event, by the 80’s the races spread to neighbouring countries in Europe. In 1985 the date was changed to the third Thursday in November so it could take advantage of Thanks Giving in America and in the 90’s the race had spread to North America and Asia.

But now you would not know, none on the supermarket shelves, no board outside wine shop s, bars or hotels.  Once back in the 1999 742,000 bottles were sold, last year only 107,000 almost an 85% drop in sales. So was it style over substance or has the British wine drinking public just grown up and look for something more, who knows.  

You can still get it in the odd shop, I did see some in a Waitrose but by and large it has now gone form the calendar to be a lesser event. I would like to say that I have tried some but I have not so I cannot report if it is any good but according to all that I have read 2012 will not be a good year.

So let’s look back with a little fondness and remember Beaujolais Nouveau, perhaps without the hypes it will grow to be something more than I remember it . After all there is more to Beaujolais  than just the Nouveau.