Celebrate….Beaujolais Nouveau

Bonsoir, Beaujolais​

Beaujolais Nouveau is a fruity, very young red wine, released for sale on the third Thursday of November. The evening of Saturday 22 November will see the temporary re-naming of a community-owned pub in Bamford, Derbyshire, in honour of this year’s event. Les Pecheurs (formerly known as the Anglers Rest) will “salute the French and the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau with a soir of fine Beaujolais vino, hors d'oeuvres and French fromage, in the company of genial hosts”. Licensee Amanda Taylor (renamed Tailleur for the occasion) says: “France marks its uncorking with parties, fireworks and other festivities and we have plenty of fun celebrating it here with our locals. It belongs to a category of wines called vins primeurs, meaning any wine sold in the same year as it is harvested, not long after completing fermentation. In the 1960s and ’70s, the wine became popular outside France, with marketing gurus turning the race to export the newly bottled wine into an event, and French newspaper Le Figaro dubbing this ‘the greatest marketing stroke since the end of World War Two’. Means of transport have allegedly included elephant, Concorde, and a hot-air balloon.

Burlesque with bourgignon​

At the Paris House in Hove, East Sussex, the new wine will be welcomed on Thursday 20 November by a loyal crowd and plenty of new faces being offered a mix of French-themed food and drink all day and music and entertainment from 6.30pm. This year burlesque from Cherri Bella adds to the atmosphere, and a husband-and-wife duo, Fleur de Paris, will sing French songs with accordion accompaniment. Beef bourgignon and coq au vin are on the menu, plus mulled wine and of course the star attraction. A capacity crowd spilling out on to the pavement in a busy street between Hove and Brighton is always a good advert for the independently owned pub.

Berets and Beau Cru​

A Beaujolais Nouveau dinner has been held at Anglian Country Inns’ the Fox at Willian in Hertfordshire for the past seven years, continually building success. This year’s four-course menu is based on traditional French cooking with a modern twist (£35 each). The event, commencing at 7pm on 20 November, includes a complimentary glass of 2014 Beaujolais, and a new offer of a flight of three Beau Cru wines to compare and enjoy with the meal (£15 extra). All 65 diners will dine together, while staff plan to join in by dressing up in blue-and-white striped shirts with red neckerchiefs and berets, accompanied by French background music. Early advertising from September ensures maximum promotion, including leaflets circulated at Anglian Country Inn establishments and nearby outlets, A4 posters, website, Twitter and Facebook.

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Bagging a box ​

Nigel Sutcliffe, founder of Truffle Hunting, which recently acquired the Lady Ottoline in London and also runs the Princess Victoria (PV), Newman Street Tavern and Henry Root, will order bag-in-box (BiB) Beaujolais Nouveau this November. 

“We have some of Marcel Lapierre’s top Cru Beaujolais on our list most of the year and are likely to have a 10-litre box of Beaujolais Nouveau – equivalent to a case – available by the carafe and glass in all our pubs during the last week in November. One 10-litre box has a much lower carbon footprint than 13 glass bottles, costs much less to transport, and keeps for about six weeks," explains Sutcliffe.

“We’ll put up posters and publicise our activities in our quarterly newsletter. Chef Matt Reuter at the PV will introduce regional classics such as snails, and l’andouillette – ​coarse-grained sausage made with pork or veal, intestines, pepper, wine, onions, and seasonings – with puy lentils, and we’ll include regional information in our Sunday night quiz.

“Our Beaujolais Nouveau will come from Château Cambon, run by Jean-Claude Chanudet and his wife Geneviève. Their old parcel of vines is just outside Morgon, which is characterised by granite/sandy soils, allowing for top Gamay grapes.

“We’ll be celebrating a well-made wine, rather than promoting an overpriced marketing exercise: wine is very dear to us and this gives an opportunity to introduce a really interesting producer to a new audience along with a bit of fun, as it should be.”