It used to be a big deal

We really kind of took the release of the new wine from Beaujolais as an event years ago. It was fun. The year we were actually in Paris, the wine stores had nice promotional posters taped up in the windows. “Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!” they read. In the US, some wine came by air and you could get it right away and the rest came slowly by ship weeks later. (They've fixed that, I think, by putting it all on ships but making the sellers hold it back until the magic release date.)

Now it's just another wine. OK, it goes with turkey, so it's nice that it gets to the US just before Thanksgiving. But the other Beaujolais wines also go with turkey. They are more complex and interesting to drink -- and they aren't any more expensive, either. Wine snobs and wine ignoramuses have banded together to make it a non-event. The latter in fact seem to think that a "nouveau" is a variety of wine, not just a very young one. Even Wikipedia has a big article where you can learn the legend.

So here I am, a curmugeonly blogger on an obscure hobby horse about how things were better in the past. I'll get over it. And I did buy a couple of bottles to have over the weekend. We'll do something better to go with the turkey -- and blog that too.

AND an update on how some people maintain the big-dealness of it:

If there’s an art to balancing a plate of hors d’oeuvres, a fat glass of wine, a cell phone and shaking your bootie all at the same time, the guests at last night’s Francophone Fest had it down pat. Fueled on the just-uncorked harvest of this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau and driving, multi-ethnic beats from all over the French-speaking world, party goers worked up a glow (chic speak for “sweating like a cochon”) on the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Ballroom floor as they danced the night away en français. [see Francophone Fest: Shakin’ it at the Roosevelt]