Beaujolais nouveau day is here again

THE JAPANESE and Chinese have already opened theirs as Beaujolais Nouveau day moves across the planet.

The day, the third Thursday of November, officially starts at midnight in Beaujeu, near Lyon, home of the vintage.

“It's good, even if there isn't much of it,” said the director of wine specialists Collin-Bourisset, Bertrand de Cuyper.

It has been a bad year for wine makers with heavy rains, frost and hail leading to a reduced harvest and pushing many vineyards to the brink of bankruptcy.

This year it has been launched with a marketing campaign linked to fashion – because, the promoters claim, the wine and French fashion share similar qualities of refinement, glamour and savoir-faire and are both ambassadors for France in the world. The term robe is also common to both – meaning either a “dress” or the “colour” of a wine.

In 2011, half of the 35 million bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau were exported. The leading drinkers are the Japanese who bought eight million, followed by the Americans with 2.4 millions and the Germans with 1.3 million.

Photo: www.beaujolaisnouveau.beaujolais.com