Beaujolais Nouveau 2010

 
Now let's get a few things out of the way.

Beaujolais nouveau is not a serious wine, it's not even an unserious one.  It's a wine to be made fun of, to snicker about and pretend you've never had, unless paid to taste for a review for some lowbrow publication. 

It's the wine for the Dinners with Cons and the one that is 99% marketing and 1% grape (and a lowly funny-tasting gamay at that).  And most of all, like Rachel Ray, it's the wine we love to hate and cannot stop talking about.  Some years it has hints of banana, some years blackberries, other years Nascar rubber tires, and everyone falls all over him or herself coming up with a new descriptor.

But the dirty little secret is that we all come back to it every year like the swallows to Capistrano.

Bernard Pivot, one of my few heros, described it thusly (he speaks fine English and my clumsy translation of his precise French is given because I don't think he's ever said this Anglophonically): "it's gay, hardy.....with a taste of springtime....[and it's] like an elixir of youth and good cheer."

So what's this year's like: We three thought it was not bad at all, no burning garbage, no fruity-essences, and not even Gamayish.  I will actually buy some more.

Comments

[Pavel314]

I bought a case of Georges Duboeuf on release day, as I do every year. I was surprised this year. The wine had more body than usual and seemed darker, more purple than in years past. Hard to compare exactly, as the case of 2009 was gone by February. I'm going to stick one at the back of the cellar, near the Amontillado, and let it age for four or five years; it seems to have potential.