A Primeur Primer

A Primeur Primer

It's tricky to pin down the beginnings of a mostly undocumented harvest ritual when it has been eclipsed in modern memory by one of the longest-running marketing gimmicks of all time.

Georges Duboeuf was already a successful Beaujolais merchant in the 1970s when he decided to mass-market a local tradition of making primeur wines. With a thirst for the fresh drinkability of young Beaujolais already leading local merchants into a frenzied scramble to get their wines into Paris’ bars first, Georges seized an opportunity to turn his family business into something of a global powerhouse.

As authorities finally settled on a legal date for shipping new wines of the season, Duboeuf – through energetic and tireless promotion – is credited with transforming an arbitrary marker in the logistics calendar into a not-to-be-missed global race. Staging ever-wilder photo-ops for international television “Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé” became a jubilant catchphrase.

And as the clock struck 12:01 on the third Thursday in November, news channels duly broadcast images, first of merchants racing their wines to Paris and latterly of trucks, boats, planes, and Formula1 drivers rushing to ship that year's Nouveau to destinations that had, in reality, received the wine weeks before.

Sadly, it almost goes without saying that much of the wine shipped was of an ever-diminishing quality, to the extent that the words Beaujolais Nouveau still leave curled lips among a certain generation who came of age putting away gallons of gut-rot red.

Beaujolais, however, could be considered the cradle of what we know as the natural wine movement with Jules Chauvet at its centre. A scientist and winemaker who began work on his wines in the 1980s without the addition of sulphur dioxide, Jules understood that healthy fruit and diligent, controlled winemaking with native yeasts could make far better wine, as it had done for centuries before the introduction of any chemical intervention in agriculture or the cellar.

So much work has been done in the years since – with Chauvet's ideas reverberating – to prove that Beaujolais is a region deserving of its own accolades far beyond some (pretty clever) marketing. And if Nouveau Day isn't going away, then the growers may as well continue promoting the notion that these properly made primeur wines really are a joy to drink as originally intended – in celebration of a year's work.