What am I always telling you. THIS is how you drink Beaujolais Nouveau. WAIT. Sure, Third Thursday is fun–and I’ve been in Nice many times during it, and even in America, wine-shops and bloggers *attempt* to capitalize on it, but the past few years I have seen a steep decline, with many retailers opting to not even bring it in. But it’s NOT horrible wine. You just need to WAIT. Have fun with in November, splash it around for the gram–and then pour it down the drain. Two rules: Never buy Nouveau under 25 bucks and don’t drink it until spring. It is good, interesting, and fun wine, but let it settle down a bit. Buy a few quality bottles and pop them spring and summer the next year as light, beautiful, slightly-chilled red lunchtime beauties. About April or May or June they are showing WONDERFULLY and I usually celebrate the holiday with LAST YEAR’S wine–when it is showing PERFECTLY. Quality Beaujolais Nouveau at one year old is almost always a beautiful thing, and when I saw these 2019’s lingering on a restaurant shelf in February of 2021, I knew nothing could go wrong. Of course, I was right.

Clean and fruity in the nose, bright floral strawberry, citrus and carbonic essence distilled down into quantifiable portions. Fresh–but with 14 months of bottle under its belt–it doesn’t come off as the shocking step-child of pinot or gamay with awkward edges or shallow fruit the new releases do. Significantly calm and poised, it has blossomed into a viable wine instead of a shallow curiosity. This one is deep ruby–still with bright pink edges–comfortably kicking the ball around in a field where Cru Bojo and even villages-level burg also practice.

Brilliant and dark in the mouth, concentrated fruit has blossomed to portions quite easy to distinguish above the early-on spectre of carbonic rush. A shallow intake immediately turns deep cherry and murky concentration riding on waves of acidity: all spelling out the world’s most perfect lunch-time quaffer. But *quaffer* gives it shallow merit, a word #influencer likes to throw around when they’ve already used “yummy” in a sentence. Beaujolais Nouveau at age 1 goes FAR beyond *quaffer*. It really has grown up, and demanding of attention. Pretty petals cascade across the middle, and the green, stemmy issues which were monolithic problems on release are now polished down into intelligent tomato-vine and briary nuances, at once complementing the fruit and on the other hand: abrading it. The lollipop, fruit-punch finish is still a calling-card, but the depth of berry and the vibrancy of the whole package has up-graded it into a justifiable glass of wine.

Let’s refresh: Buy the Beaujolais Nouveau. Keep it for the next summer and finish it the next year. You might look at Third Thursday differently, but your opinion of Nouveau will change, I guarantee it.

2019 GEORGES DUBEOUF Beaujolais Nouveau Gamay Burgundy France 13.0

http://www.duboeuf.com/Home/House.sls
https://www.quintessentialwines.com/