Le Beaujolais Nouveau Est Arrivé!

Every year, Beaujolais Nouveau Day celebrates the release of France’s most popular vin de primeur (early wine). Laid down in French law, it's always the third Thursday in November.

In 2025 Beaujolais Nouveau Day will be celebrated on Thursday 20th November. Learn more about the Beaujolais region in our Guide to Beaujolais.

We're working with Cecile and Alain Dardanelli at Domaine bel Avenir again this year and we're looking forward to tasting the first and fastest wine of the seaon. Buy Now I recently asked Cecile how 2025 looks. Thus far its been a good year with plenty of sunshine which promises ripe grapes and great flavours. The grapes aren't quite ready to harvest yet, but she gave me a quick run down on the Beaujolais Nouveau process:

1. Grapes ripen through the summer. More sunshine equals more ripeness and more flavour.
2. The harvest begins in September. Grapes are manually harvested by hand with an experienced team of pickers.
3. In the winery the grapes are sorted and undergo carbonic maceration - a type of vinification which gives Beaujolais its typical flavours of bright red fruits and bubblegum.
4. The wine spends about 6 weeks in concrete or stainless steel tanks before bottling, making this the first and fastest wine of the year.
5. On the third Thursday in November the world celebrates Beaujolais Nouveau Day. 

What is Beaujolais Noveau?

It is the fastest and most exciting wine of the year.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a light and fruity red wine. It can only be made from Gamay grapes, all of which have been grown and harvested by around 400 small farmers in the Beaujolais region. It’s bottled and sold within just 6-8 weeks of the grapes being picked.

The 'must' (freshly picked grape juice) is pressed after only three days, so the astringent tannins usually found in red wine are hardly noticeable. As a result nouveau wine is a little like a white wine in style, despite its purple-pink colour.

Expect the bright, fresh, red-fruit flavours of strawberry, raspberry and cherry, plus notes of banana, grape and pear drop which bring to mind the childhood flavours of bubble-gum.

How should you serve your nouveau?  

Serve your nouveau wine slightly chilled (pop it in the fridge for about 20 minutes so that it's at about 13°C) and serve it generously; it doesn’t improve with age, so enjoy the moment.

Since the 1800s, Beaujolais growers have made and drunk early wines - called vin de primeur in French - to celebrate the end of the harvest. Now Beaujolais Nouveau is drunk all over the world, especially in the US, UK, and Japan (where they're mad about it).

The 1960s saw the start of the obsession with getting the new vintage before anyone else. At first this was a sprint by vignerons to get their wines to the fashionable bistros of Paris. In the 1970s the English wine critic Alan Hall of the Sunday Times threw down the gauntlet to "bring back the Beaujolais" - starting a fashion to race bottles across the Channel (a tradition which continues to this day). The race became so popular it spread to scores of locations across the world. It’s now a quirky international event.

It pairs really well with soft cheeses made from cows milk, think Brie or Camembert - for something English try it with Sharpham cheese. Other picky bits you can pair Beaujolais with include chacuterie, sauscisson, and paté.

The fruity, cranberry notes common in Beaujolais Nouveau also make it a great wine to crack open on Christmas Day or to serve with the cold cuts on Boxing Day.

Is Beaujolais serious or frivolous?

This wine is definitely in the fun category: it is inexpensive and easy-drinking, with the joy coming from taking part in an international wine moment each year.

Throw a party to celebrate the moment and let friends and family share in the first taste of the newest vintage.

Even the labels are lively and part of the experience is finding out how the new bottles will be dressed.

You could also hold back a few bottles for Christmas Day. A light and fruity gamay makes for a perfect wine to pair with Christmas lunch. It also goes extremely well with the cold cuts on Boxing Day! 

Strictly for drinking?

No! You can cook with it too. It is the wine traditionally used in coq au vin or to poach pears.

Pears Poached in Beaujolais

Buy Beaujolais Nouveau - but be quick, when it's gone, it's gone!