Catching a Rainbow

Part I












In the murk of a late autumn night, wine makers through out a small wine-producing region of France throw open their cellar doors and bid goodbye to one of Frances most talked about products…the Beaujolais Nouveau.

The transports are loaded, the routes well planned and the culmination of a few short weeks of frenetic work is about to draw to a close.
Awaited by many, adored by some and abhorred by others, the release of the Beaujolais Nouveau, whether you love it or hate it, is in itself a spectacle, an event and an experience.





Originally a race to see who could open the first bottle in Paris, there is now a certain prestige to be the first establishment in the world to open and serve a first bottle of the new vintage; and chic hotels and restaurants vie with each other to be the first.
It is all rather perplexing, as I am sure there are numerous people… most probably the entire adult population of the Beaujolais region, who will almost certainly taste the new wine long before the restaurant goers of London, San Francisco or even Paris.

In bars and bistros alike the phrase “Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrive, " can equally be seen festooned between oaken rafters, chalked on to strategically placed boards or slates or, impersonally stuck to a lampost as a piece of cold sticky backed plastic advertising the New Wine.













The name Beaujolais Nouveau is not strictly the correct terminology; it being adopted in the 1980’s as one of the most successful marketing ploys for French wine.
Wines released between the harvest of one year and those of the subsequent, are generally called ‘Nouveau,’ however, in the case of the famous Beaujolais, it is released from the Autumn of one year to the spring of the next and under French and European law should be called… Beaujolais Primeur.


Some have called it the most frivolous and animated ritual in the wine world but it is hugely important to the region of Beaujolais, able to make or break a vineyard depending on the quality of its first Beaujolais.
Over 65 million bottles are produced, accounting for nearly half the regions total wine output and produces the first real income of the wine makers year.






Beaujolais is not only a wine producing area of France, but it is also an ancient province, which was broken up into smaller areas when the French département system came into being in 1790.






Located roughly between the towns of Lyon to the south and Mâcon to the north, Beaujolais straddles the two départements of the Rhône and the Saône-et-Loire. To the east is the Saône River, born at Vioménil in the Vosges, merging with the Rhône at Lyon and wending its way south to the sea. To the west are the low mountains of Beaujolais, which form the North Eastern edge of the Massif Central.






The phenomenon of Beaujolais Nouveau is a recent one, only coming into existence in the 1950’s; it did not really catch on until 1980’s; and in some ways coincided with the birth of Cuisine Nouvelle as a light fresh and new approach to wine.


However, the making and drinking of new wine is anything but new. Hundreds of years before Christ, a new wine was being given to slaves as a cheap form of payment. ‘Serva potio’ or the ‘slaves drink,’ was made from the skins of already pressed grapes. After the initial pressing the skins were re-mixed with water, re-pressed and the resulting liquor given to those in forced servitude.


St Martin, the Patron Saint of wine makers and viticulture died on the 11th November 400AD (the exact year is not known), and traditionally young wine was served at the celebratory feast.
Originally a pagan festival of ‘fertility and light,’ the early church were quick to associate the day with a Christian saint; thus the masses kept their holiday and were able to celebrate something more acceptable to the church.
There is no credible connection between St Martin of Tours, and the spread of viticulture through the Touraine region of France during th 4th Century AD; and was certainly not mentioned by the early writers of the Hagiographa, the biography of the saints. However, this did not prevent the makers of Beaujolais Nouveau choosing this imaginative date for the launch of the very first Beaujolais Nouveau.





Part Two

St Martins Day, the 11th November, later coincided with the signing of the Armistice - which drew the First World War to a close. As a mark of respect to the fallen the date for the launch of the new Beaujolais was moved to the 15th of November. Finally the third Thursday in November was chosen as the preferred date; some say to fashion a long weekend of celebration; so enjoyed by the French.

In the late Middle-Ages, wine was neither made nor stored in the fashion it is today. Good wine making requires clean, sterile conditions and these were lacking in the cellars of the early part of the 14th Century. Right up until the early 18th Century wine was still being sold in open containers and being drunk very young thus avoiding the problem of oxidation, whereby wine turns to vinegar, which often occurred during storage. As such there was a general predominance for drinking young wines as the older ones were generally ruined by oxidation.

Beaujolais Nouveau first came into existence on the 11th March 1951, but it would be another thirty years before the phenomenon really caught on.
Before that date the sale and supply of wine was in accordance with a meticulous calendar, which only allowed so much wine from any given vintage from any of the wine producing regions to come onto the market at one time. Thus preserving a constant supply of wine for the Army, and ensuring that good prices were maintained.

In 1951 a decree was passed preventing the sale of the 51 harvest before the 15th December that year. In the October of that same year the wine makers of Beaujolais worked together and requested that they be allowed to sell their wines, including Nouveau, straight away. They argued the special case for Beaujolais, a wine best drunk young, and Beaujolais Nouveau was certainly an early wine…their request was granted.
For the next fifteen years the release date for the new wine was not fixed, but changed from year to year. On the 15th November 1967 the release date was set for midnight of the 15th and this stood until 1985 when the date was changed to the third Thursday of November. During the intervening period there was one exception in 1977 when the vines ripened late, and as a consequence the wine was not released until the 25th that year.

Critics of this wine say that it is purely a marketing ploy, designed to sell wine early in the life of a vintage, thus subsidising older wines, which will have less of a return until they have aged and come onto the market. This is not altogether true as Beaujolais’ in general are wines best drunk young and it is only in exceptional years, for the big wine names, that Beaujolais will be kept for perhaps ten years.

Not only is Beaujolais Nouveau marketed differently it is also made differently from other wines, thus producing a light refreshing drink, which would be better suited to drinking in the height of summer than at Christmas. Some say that Beaujolais Nouveau is as close to a white wine… as a red can get, which makes it a very popular drink in the United States where little red wine is drunk.
In common with all wines from the region, Beaujolais Nouveau is made from the Gamay noir à Jus Blanc grape, or more often just know as, Gamay. The grapes are hand picked and as with the grapes of the Champagne region this process is mandatory. In addition Beaujolais Nouveau cannot be made with grapes from any of the ten Crus or big wine names those being: Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly, Saint-Amour, Chiroubles, Chénas, Fleurie, Juliénas, and, Régnié. but only from the two appellations of Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages.

The wine is made by a process known as Carbonic Maceration, where the grapes are not crushed prior to fermentation but rather the juice is allowed to ferment within the grape producing a fresh fruity quality to the wine without extracting the bitter tannins which are released when the skins are crushed.
All Nouveau are made to be drunk early and usually by the following spring. In exceptional years, such as 2000 they can last longer and be drinkable up until the following harvest, but that is rare.

As with other young Beaujolais Nouveau is best served cool but not iced as has become the fashion. 13°C (55°F), is advised for Beaujolais Nouveau whereas other older wines from the region are best drunk at 17°C (60-65°F).

“Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!”

Although the Americans, not particularly fond of the French but, passionate about Beaujolais Primeur, have changed to slogan to…

"It's Beaujolais Nouveau Time!"


References:
http://www.slate.com/?id=2074387
http://www.beaujolais.com/pages/vinsDuB/12apels/EN/bnouv_histoire.asp
http://www.beaujolais.net/frameSet.asp?page=http%3A//www.beaujolais.net/pages/actus/sommaire/pageActuEN.asp%3Fart%3D1009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaujolais_nouveau
http://www.louisjadot.com/index_uk.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_of_Tours
http://www.wineintro.com/types/beaujolaisnouveau.html
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=81
http://www.winepros.org/wine101/grape_profiles/gamay.htm

April’s showers have abated and the Ides of March are long since past, but the end of spring often arrives as a damp squib.
May, a month unable to decide if it belongs to spring or summer, varies from day to day. Driving rain, chill winds and yet on occasions such wonderfully clear blue skies that leave the sweltering days of full summer to shame.
Food is as problematic as the climate at this time of the year, and as one seasonal fare comes to an end so another falteringly begins.

The mainstays of winter fruit, apples and pears have had their day, stored since last autumn when they were plucked from orchards all over France. Their end is nie; even having been stored in a protective suffocating atmosphere cannot prevent their slow inevitable demise.


Oranges seem to have shrunk from within and the bittersweet juice of last summer is but a memory.
Strawberries arrive early in the month, far too early; and without enough sun are bland and tasteless as the monstrous greenhouses in which they are forced.
The first cherries appear in the second week of May, expensive 11€ a kilo ($3.80 - Lb, £3.40 - Lb), apparently cheaper than last year but in another two weeks the heat of flaming June will make them worth buying and the price will have fallen to something we can all afford.
Too early for peaches, nectarines and plums and the first melons come from Morocco.
We are graced with new potatoes with their thin skins and pale waxy flesh but broccoli and cauliflowers are coming to an end, and the ever-elusive asparagus never quite seems to appear.






A few stems of tasteless deathly white grass are on offer at the moment but the slender green variety which used to be grown all over France, including Brittany, are but dew on a summer morning, here one minute gone the next.

Rhubarb, a vegetable which the French are not really convinced about, can be found in a few markets and supermarkets but not the fine champagne variety so sought after by chefs all over the world.



Pré-salé lamb, fed exclusively on the salt marshes around Mont St Michel in Normandy is a meat not to be forgotten. The pastures covered by the sea twice a day leave a residue of salt in the grass on which the lambs feed. However, it is reluctant to make an appearance in Brittany and only a few butchers stock this wonderful product.



The Scallop season is over and the water is too cold for mussels worth eating.







The finest Breton Artichokes are still two or three weeks away from being available, leeks are turning woody, garlic is drying out and the onions seem to be sprouting into life forgetting they are on a market trolley and not in the soil.

One could be led to believe that May was a depressing time for the avid gastronome or gourmand…not so. This lack of availability is merely but a pause, a break in the natural cycle of the world, a lull between seasons. This respite has been lost in the UK and USA, with twenty-four hour a day three hundred and sixty five days a year commercialism, consumerism and the feeding of mammon.
Strawberries at Christmas, peaches in January and asparagus all year round, in fact every day of the year every single fruit and vegetable known to man can be bought in nearly all supermarkets throughout these two lands. No wonder people moan and complain that the fruit is not the same as the fruit of their youth; the fruit of their youth did not cross the globe, under ripe, overpriced and unready for anything apart from the bin. But these same people still buy food out of season, still complain and still finance the trade in tasteless food.
I would rather put up with the vagaries of May if it meant that I could taste those first strawberries, bite into the very first green asparagus stems or feast myself on a pot of plump fresh mussels when they are ready to be eaten.
May gives the body a little time to rest, a time to dwell on the wonderful fruits, vegetables and other foods from both the sea and the land, which will all be available in their time and season.
May gives us time to prepare, to dust of the cookery books and be ready for the onslaught of colours and taste, which will soon assail our senses
May is such a great month.
©Copywrite Malcolm Hamilton 2007©

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