Querido Coleccionista Crossover: Vino Novello e Beujolais, a liquid ode to Autumn
This month, Cris and I talk about autumn hues in wine
This is the monthly appointment
and I have with our pools of readers. It is our monthly appointment for an intra-newsletter dialogue where we jointly write here and on .Every month we will explore a theme. The articles are free for our subscribers, but you can always think of giving us a donation!
It is that time of the year when we say goodbye (and see you soon) to the good seasons - that for me is spring and summer. I do not particularly like autumn, and I resent winter.
Colder days and lack of sunshine make me sad, and this is one of the reasons I decided to spend my life oscillating gently between the Dolomites in Italy and Lisbon in Portugal.
I can be happy in both places, in any season.
But I like the food of the colder seasons, of course. And what I like the most, is the fact that the new vintages are bottled, and will soon be ready to drink.
And there is a date that we all, wine drinkers and wine lovers, keep in mind. This year is the 16th of November, a Thursday: Beaujolais Nouveau Day:
under French law, the wine is released at 12:01 a.m., just weeks after the wine’s grapes have been harvested
Says the website, adding that the:
much-ballyhooed cherry-red colored vintage that’s best served chilled — is clearly not for wine snobs. This fresh and fruity red is the result of a quick fermentation process that ends up with a tasty, clean wine that is enjoyed by palates the world over.
And we rejoice, of course.
Even if Novello wine and BJN have fairly distinctive traits, and Novello has fewer rules, to me they belong to the same semantics.
Young wines to be enjoyed in the late fall, before winter closes on us.
Let It Wine tells us that:
Italy uses various grapes to create novello wine which include Barbera, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Nebbiolo, Pinot Noir, Refosco, Sangiovese and Ciliegiolo. French Beaujolais nouveau uses the carbonic maceration method for 100% of its grapes, whereas the Italian novella can use carbonic maceration for 100% of its grapes but is only required to use 40%, and the other 40% could be produced using the traditional fermentation method.
As we prepared this crossover post,
asked meQué recuerdo tienes del primer Beaujolais nouveau que probaste? Cuándo fue? Dónde? Y con quien?
What memory do you have of the first Beaujolais nouveau you tried? When it was? Where? And with whom?
My first encounter with Beaujolais nouveau was during my first year as an expat in the Netherlands. The sheer amount of French colleagues I shared the floor with had mounted a huge party, one of the “bring your own glass” kind, which in a normally Euro-boring office environment turned out to be a rather impromptu “bring the coffee mug” too.
There were roasted chestnuts and some cookies from Alsace, and as the afternoon faded into an early chill, I felt alive and happy and infused with a sudden need to visit France very soon, or at least hop to Paris, a vice of mine fueled by the high-speed train connecting Rotterdam to the Gare du Nord.
However, in an embarrassing “take the photography chest of forgotten memories and pull out an ace”, here is a picture of me during my stay in Tuscany, with a borrowed hat which I believe may have been a belonging of a friend of
, celebrating the new wine, the new sausages and the new year in a former mining town on the Amiata mountain.That was the first time I tasted new wine in Tuscany, and fresh pork meat (uncooked, yes) was minced and blended with spices and spread on bread, and I had a literal blast.
I want to bring in Tommaso into this conversation about wine because he is a fellow wine lover and a writer.
He writes for Intravino, which is the most informative and less stiff and preachy wine news outlet in Italy.
He is also a highly creative winemaker, with his project Cantina del Rospo - the winery that reuses bottles. I leave here a link to the latest post on Tommaso’s blog, in case you also want to subscribe:
In turn, as I shared that memory of mine AND a picture, I ask
Cual és tu recuerdo favorito con este tipo de vino?
What is your favorite memory with the new wine?
She will answer this in her mirroring post, so go read it while it’s freshly poured :)