Beaujolais Nouveau 2010

[Silversage]

I had Georges DuBoeuf also.

 

[inviteur]

The"beaujolais nouveau"'s day is a very special day in France like your Halloween day .
Everybody tastes this new wine ( at work, at home, in the bar, never in restaurants) and each time we have the same reflexions - it's horrible, it's not good and so on.
oh my god, i don't like the banana test flavor or this year it tastes red fruits flavor
And i am pleased to see that the bottles of beaujolais are not sold with high prices in your country. $9 a bottle is quiet the same as in France ( about $5-6 for a duboeuf)

 

[buckytom]

i'm not sure if halloween is a good comparison as it is based on various religious holidays of significance. business and traditions were secondary in it's origins.

it's more like valentine's or mother's day: all have a history (much like the annual release of the youngest wines ready for market in this case), then someone came along and realized there was a way to turn it into a way to both create a celebration based around the idea, as well as make money from it. hmm, ok, not all that different than halloween. just a little more exploitive.

i think it's great to celebrate; love, moms, wine, etc. that's how we all got here, lol.

who was born in august (i used my fingers)? you may have been a beaujolais baby...

 

[vitauta]

yeh sure, we'll gladly raise our beaujolais bottles to mothers, lovers, leos, and to youth, eternal, forever-young youth....

 

[Mad Cook]

Highly over rated. The whole Beaujolais Nouveau thing is about marketing an inferior wine and making a lot of dosh from it. There are better (and, in some cases, less expensive) wines.

It was very fashionable in the UK in the '80s. The market was swamped with BN with little regard to quality and became a competitive thing particularly among the wide boys in the financial world who wouldn't know a good wine if it got up and bit them. As it became widely available to anyone who wanted it, it lost its kudos.

Interestingly, when it was introduced to the USA the traditional date in November when it hit the market was altered to take advantage of the Thanksgiving trade.

On Sunday we had a bottle of Cotes du Rhone Reserve (my laptop can't do circumflexes and grave accents). Not as good as a "Villages" but not half bad and not expensive.

 

[taxlady]

...
On Sunday we had a bottle of Cotes du Rhone Reserve (my laptop can't do circumflexes and grave accents). Not as good as a "Villages" but not half bad and not expensive.

"Villages"?

Does your laptop have a numeric keypad? Is it running Windows? If so, ô = alt 0244 (but you have to use the numeric keypad for the digits).

 

[buckytom]

lol, taxy, you beat me to ascii-n maddie if she knew about those.

 

[taxlady]

I even have a bilingual keyboard, but I never figured out how to make it do the French accents and special characters.

 

[Andy M.]

Beaujolais Villages
Beaujolais Villages is the appellation for red, white and rosé wines from an area made up of 38 villages in the north of the Beaujolais region.

 

[Andy M.]

"Villages"?

Does your laptop have a numeric keypad? Is it running Windows? If so, ô = alt 0244 (but you have to use the numeric keypad for the digits).

If you have a Mac it's even easier. alt/option+i, o = ô

 

[GotGarlic]

"Villages"?

Does your laptop have a numeric keypad? Is it running Windows? If so, ô = alt 0244 (but you have to use the numeric keypad for the digits).

And here are the rest of the extended characters: http://www.theasciicode.com.ar/

Windows also comes with the Character Map utility: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/...special-character-into-a-document-ascii-codes

 

[Mad Cook]

"Villages"?

Does your laptop have a numeric keypad? Is it running Windows? If so, ô = alt 0244 (but you have to use the numeric keypad for the digits).

Cotes du Rhone Villages AOC (Appellation d'Origine Controlee) is a step up from Cotes du Rhone AOC but not as special as Chateauneuf du Pape, etc., but that's more expensive here and I can't justify it very often.

Nothing wrong with Cotes du Rhone AOC. Perfectly good everyday wine.

Thanks for the heads up on French accents. I am on Windows and do have a key pad but the "alt 0244" doesn't work. I even tried temporarily converting the spell checker to French and that doesn't work either. Pestilential Packard Bell laptop. It was in the sale - I should have known better than to allow the seller to talk me into it!

 

[GotGarlic]

Cotes du Rhone Villages AOC (Appellation d'Origine Controlee) is a step up from Cotes du Rhone AOC but not as special as Chateauneuf du Pape, etc., but that's more expensive here and I can't justify it very often.

Nothing wrong with Cotes du Rhone AOC. Perfectly good everyday wine.

Thanks for the heads up on French accents. I am on Windows and do have a key pad but the "alt 0244" doesn't work. I even tried temporarily converting the spell checker to French and that doesn't work either. Pestilential Packard Bell laptop. It was in the sale - I should have known better than to allow the seller to talk me into it!

Just to make sure, you need to hold down the alt key while pressing the numbers. Is that what you did? This is a Windows feature and isn't related to the manufacturer. The Character Map should also work.

 

[Steve Kroll]

Thanks for the heads up on French accents. I am on Windows and do have a key pad but the "alt 0244" doesn't work. I even tried temporarily converting the spell checker to French and that doesn't work either. Pestilential Packard Bell laptop. It was in the sale - I should have known better than to allow the seller to talk me into it!

Having worked in the UK, I can tell you that the keyboards work a little differently than US keyboards, and can attest they are particularly troublesome for US users to get used to.

Do you by chance have the "AltGr" key? If so, you should be able to hold down AltGr and press the circumflex key (to the right of "A"), followed by the "o" key.

On other UK keyboards, it may produce the special "ALT" characters by using the left ALT key ONLY. As GG says, you must hold down the key while typing in the entire sequence of numbers on the numeric keypad, in this case 0244.

If you are on a tablet with a virtual keyboard, the special characters can often be created by holding down the base character key (in this case "O") and waiting for the alternate character menu to pop up.

Hope this helps.

 

[Steve Kroll]

Highly over rated. The whole Beaujolais Nouveau thing is about marketing an inferior wine and making a lot of dosh from it. There are better (and, in some cases, less expensive) wines.

I couldn't agree more, at least with respect to the "nouveau" wine.

It should be noted there are different levels of quality when it comes to Beaujolais wines. Nouveau, which is wine only a couple of months old, is in my opinion, a gassy, tart wine. I don't care for it, but others seems to like it. But there is also village level Beaujolais. It can be pretty good and can often age for several years. I recently had a Cru Beaujolais, which is considered the upper level. They're kind of hard to find in the US, but aren't all that expensive when you do. The Cru Beaujolais are somewhat similar to Burgundy in body and flavor.

 

[taxlady]

Cotes du Rhone Villages AOC (Appellation d'Origine Controlee) is a step up from Cotes du Rhone AOC but not as special as Chateauneuf du Pape, etc., but that's more expensive here and I can't justify it very often.

Nothing wrong with Cotes du Rhone AOC. Perfectly good everyday wine.

Thanks for the heads up on French accents. I am on Windows and do have a key pad but the "alt 0244" doesn't work. I even tried temporarily converting the spell checker to French and that doesn't work either. Pestilential Packard Bell laptop. It was in the sale - I should have known better than to allow the seller to talk me into it!

Thanks for the explanation of "Village". Now I can place those wines in terms of quality. I am quite fond of Côte du Rhône. I have had Chateauneuf du Pape and that was really, really nice.

 

[inviteur]

Most of the people in foreign countries think about wines in grape variety as the famous Chardonnay we all see in the US serials or the Pinot noir or the Merlot and so on.

In France, we reason in wine region which are strictly delimited and you can see on the label glued on the bottle "Appelation d'origine contrôlée" or "A.O.C" which means that 100% of the wine come from the Region.
If we don' t reason in terms of grape variety, it's because for us it's a non sense.
First of all, lots of French wine are blended like whiskey especially for the Bordeaux where you find Merlot and Cabernet .
The second reason is that a same grape variety doesn't produce the same wine even in a single region.

Let's take example with Beaujolais which is produced south of Burgundy from south Mâcon to the north of Lyon. All Beaujolais are made with Gamay grape variety but there is huge difference between a Chiroubles wine, a Julienas wine, Beaujolais villages or simply Beaujolais in the taste and the price.
All are Beaujolais. To better understand, you have a production region with grape variety fixed in it. In the region, you have counties strictly delimited by the quality of the ground, sun exposure and so on, and in the counties you have the properties with higher ground qualities to produce the wine.
To take an example, a simple road on a hill may cut designation on wine. On the left of the road Julienas designation, of the right of the road simply Beaujolais.
So to make an easy scale of quality of wine, from the lower to the higher, you have Beaujolais, then Beaujolais village, then vineyard wines.

"Beaujolais nouveau" or "Beaujolais primeur" is an early wine picked at the beginning of September and sold at the end of November. You may have all kinds of this wines such as cote du rhône primeur and you never find a vineyard primeur.

For those interested by that , i post an english link
Beaujolais Wine – Discover Light, Refreshing French Wines

 

[Steve Kroll]

Most of the people in foreign countries think about wines in grape variety as the famous Chardonnay we all see in the US serials or the Pinot noir or the Merlot and so on.

Thank you for the link. It's always good to learn.

There is a popular misconception, particularly among Europeans, that US wines are all driven by the grape variety. While Americans generally find it helpful to know whether they are buying Chardonnay or Zinfandel, it's not entirely true.

A wine CAN have a single grape designation on the label but it may still be a blend. It only has to contain 75% of the named grape. So the American Cabernet Sauvignon you are drinking (well, probably not in France) may contain 80% Cab Sauv, 15% Merlot, 3% Malbec, and 2% Petit Verdot. If the blend contains less than 75% of any given grape, then it must be named something else. In the US, you will sometimes see the name "Meritage" on a label. This indicates that it can contain any of the same varietals allowed in Bordeaux, usually (but not always) with Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot being the dominant grape in the blend.

Beyond that, we have AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) in the US. In order to put the AVA designation on the label, 95% of the grapes must be grown in the named area. We also have vineyard designates. If the vineyard is specified, then all of the grapes must have been grown in that vineyard.

Different in some respects from France and other parts of Europe but, as you see, we also have rules regarding labelling.

Where we differ in the US is that we don't put constraints on what grapes can be grown in any given region or AVA. There are some grapes that grow better in certain regions. For example, in parts of Oregon (a state), Pinot Noir and Chardonnay do very well. So well, in fact, that the Joseph Drouhin company of Burgundy has opened a winery there. But you will not find many Bordeaux varieties grown in that area. The cooler climate and soil types aren't as well suited to those grapes.

However, if one wanted to grow Merlot in Oregon and sell it, it might not make very good wine, but it wouldn't be prohibited by law.

So that's why an AOC type system wouldn't work as well here. Our winemaking is at a stage where we are still determining what grows best in our different terroirs. Even where we have a good idea of what works, we still don't want to impose limits on the winemaker's creativity.

 

[inviteur]

Thank you for the link. It's always good to learn.

There is a popular misconception, particularly among Europeans, that US wines are all driven by the grape variety. While Americans generally find it helpful to know whether they are buying Chardonnay or Zinfandel, it's not entirely true.


Thank you very much for your explanation and i do know even i have not never tasted that foreign wines could be as good as French wines low and medium ones . The upper best will remain French.
But you know and it's the reason i'm here among you, we all live with stereotypes on each other. When we watch US tv serials and we see the glass of chardonay in the kitchen with a true romantic music with spaghetti cooked with a branch of celery rising above the bag, we laugh at this

 

[Mad Cook]

I couldn't agree more, at least with respect to the "nouveau" wine.

It should be noted there are different levels of quality when it comes to Beaujolais wines. Nouveau, which is wine only a couple of months old, is in my opinion, a gassy, tart wine. I don't care for it, but others seems to like it. But there is also village level Beaujolais. It can be pretty good and can often age for several years. I recently had a Cru Beaujolais, which is considered the upper level. They're kind of hard to find in the US, but aren't all that expensive when you do. The Cru Beaujolais are somewhat similar to Burgundy in body and flavor.

Yes, I meant the Nouveau when I said over rated.