our selection of eight bottles of this famous red wine which is reinventing itself

Selection This Thursday, November 21, is the annual high mass of the famous “new” little red balloon on the zincs. In recent years, Beaujolais winegrowers have rediscovered a taste for “good”!

In the 1990s, Beaujolais Nouveau represented half of the region's wine production. No wonder the French kept a bitter taste after drinking it down to the dregs! Thirty years later, and after the deep crisis that the vineyard has experienced over the last twenty years, Beaujolais in general and the new in particular are reinventing themselves. With an area of ​​12,000 hectares today, Beaujolais has uprooted more than half of its vines – they still totaled 23,000 at the start of the 2000s – and a quarter of the wines are displayed as “primeur”. Thus, in 2023, 15.5 million bottles were marketed under the Beaujolais and Beaujolais Villages Nouveau appellations, with the entire annual production, all AOCs combined, from this wine-growing region being around 78 million bottles.

The arrival of a new generation (children of winegrowers, neo-winegrowers) at the head of the estates, concerned with cleaner and less industrial viticulture, inspired by the natural wine movement, has instilled a qualitative dynamic in recent years which irradiates the entire vineyard today. A fair return of things in short. Let us remember that a certain Marcel Lapierre, winemaker in Villié-Morgon, began to make wine without sulphite…