As I write this, the wine bar across the street is doing a Beaujolais Nouveau Day breakfast, complete with red, white and blue bunting and a blackboard shouting Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivée! Despite a steady decline in popularity since its heyday in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the Beaujolais breakfast is a wine world idiosyncrasy that refuses to die, blithely rooted in a time when blackberries were fruit and latte was Italian for milk.
This year’s Beaujolais Nouveau harvest was apparently the worst since 1975, but that did not stop the traditional French street parties and has not deterred the Japanese from opening a ‘Beaujolais Nouveau Spa’ (whatever that is).
The Beaujolais Run, a race to bring the first bottle of the new vintage back to London, was created in 1972 by Sunday Times journalist Allan Hall as a challenge to his readers. A sort of up-market booze cruise, it became an annual event, but it was never about the wine itself. Just as well, as ‘young red plonk’ is about as kind as a Beaujolais Nouveau tasting note can be with a straight face.
In search of inspiration for this week’s instalment, I abandoned France for Germany and tried the Dr Loosen Riesling Spätlese 2007, a good low-alcohol option (8% abv), although with a fair bit of residual sugar. The Dr Loosen sales blurb informs us that a great wine requires a “fiercely held philosophy” and that it “begins in your head” (I thought that was where it ended up if you drank too much).
All of which confused me so I headed back to the motherland - for all their philosophising in other areas of life, the French are reassuringly no-nonsense when it comes to winemaking. At the other end of the alcohol spectrum, the J. L. Chave Mon Coeur Cotes du Rhone 2003 had great fruit concentration and zingy acidity, but at 14% was a bit hot. Chateau de Beaucastel Châteauneuf du Pape 2003 was my favourite of the week - a big, spicy nose, dark cherries, pepper and bitter chocolate on the palate and a lovely long finish. Less fanfare than the Beaujolais but a lot more substance.