Flexible, drinkable, embraceable wine just for you

Increasing wine knowledge requires stretching personal limits and tastes. The best advice received and repeated is to try different wines. Don’t hesitate to pop a cork on something new and embrace it.

And so that was my approach to France’s great gift to the holiday season, Beaujolais Nouveau. Any conversation about French wine starts with geography and ends with regulations — the French are really big on both.

The Beaujolais designation is north of Lyon, France, but very small. The region is just over 30 miles long and up to nine miles wide. But this tiny area packs in nearly 4,000 growers who nurture and harvest the Gamay grape.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a very light-bodied, fruity wine made to drink very young. The bottles on the shelves of your local wine retailer are made from the 2009 vintage and picked just a few weeks ago. By French wine laws, the wine is shipped and available for sale on the third Thursday of each November.

The wine’s selling point is its flexibility and drinkability.

“I tell people it’s a young, vibrant, juicy, fruity wine,” said Philip VanDuesen, proprietor of Pairings near Castleton Mall at Indianapolis. “If they approach it that way and not expect world-class wine, they’ll enjoy it. It’s fun to drink with vibrant fruit and a deep dark purple color.

“It’s fresh and zingy and it has bright acidity. It’s beautiful with all types of food. It works well with all the holiday dishes. It has enough fruit to stand up to the cranberries and acid for the gravies but enjoy it with anything. It’s a fun beverage wine.”

Some suggest, not all agree, that Beaujolais Nouveau is a preview of each growing season’s grape crop. The word from many French vintners through various trade publications is 2009 is shaping up as a great vintage. Some Beaujolais reviews have called the 2009 less fruity but still a must buy for the holiday season.

The wine is low in alcohol, easy to drink, and affordable. It’s unusual to find one that isn’t in the $10-$12 price range.

Not only does the wine pair well with holiday meals of fowl and side dishes, it’s also a pretty good introduction to more serious wine for the wine novice.

The wine gets its easy-to-like characteristics from a different style of wine making. Do you wish to talk about carbonic maceration or whole berry fermentation? What that means is the process does not draw the tannins from the grape skins, so you get a very refreshing wine.

Beaujolais producers also use the Gamay grape to make more traditional wines with a little aging and a little oak. I’ve recommended one of each below.

Georges Duboeuf is the biggest producer in the region. His family has been involved in the wine business for more than 300 years. He works with more than 400 growers and produces about 30 million bottles of Nouveau annually.

Howard’s Picks:

George Duboeuf 2009 Beaujolais Nouveau — This is the most popular and easiest to find of all Nouveau. It generally sells for $10-$12. The wine has a nose and taste of grape, not quite the Concord grape flavor of your youth but definitely grape. If you’re not sure your guests enjoy wine, Nouveau is a safe bet.

Louis Jadot Beaujolais Villages 2008 — This is not a Nouveau but it is the Gamay grape. This is a better pairing with food if your guests are wine drinkers. It has the freshness of the Nouveau but has very mild tannins and a little more acid than the younger wine. This is a nice $13 bottle of wine.
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Howard Hewitt of Crawfordsville is a wine enthusiast who writes a column every other week for The Tribune.