Brooklyn Winery Celebrates End of Harvest with Housemade "Brooklyn Nouveau"
“Beaujolais must be the most inspired invention in the history of wine,” wrote importer Kermit Lynch in Adventures on the Wine Route. “What a concept, downing a newborn wine that has barely left the grape. It even serves to remind us of the first time man tasted fermented grape juice and decided it was an accident of nature worth pursuing.”
Lynch is speaking of Beaujolais Nouveau, a wine annually produced from the Gamay Noir grape in the Beaujolais region of France for immediate release on the third Thursday of November, as a party wine to celebrate the end of harvest. The grapes get picked, crushed, fermented into wine, and put straight into the bottle. Mass marketing has had its negative effects on Beaujolais Nouveau, since some is produced without much care, specifically to be profitable for the coinciding celebrations. But not the Beaujolais Nouveau you’ll taste in our wine bar on November 17, brought in by Mr. Lynch.
Beaujolais Nouveau functions also to give consumers a foretaste of the vintage of standard Beaujolais wines to be released the following spring. And while largely ignored by the point system critics for decades, these wines -- both entry level and to the highest Crus -- offer some of the most astounding value-to-quality existing in the current international wine market.
“These days, there is probably no wine that I am more excited about than Beaujolais,” wrote author and Master Sommelier Rajat Parr in his Secrets Of The Sommeliers. “I drink it at home, I drink it in restaurants, I push it at my restaurants. I cannot get enough of it.”
At our Brooklyn Nouveau celebration you’ll have the option to drink both Crus Beaujolais, and of course Beaujolais Nouveau. Additionally, our winemaker Conor McCormack has produced his own take on a “nouveau” style wine, using Pinot Noir grapes. As with Beaujolais Nouveau, these grapes went through a process called carbonic maceration, in which whole cluster grapes absorb carbon dioxide while in a sealed vessel, causing fermentation to take place in each single grape prior to crushing and standard fermentation. The result is a wine -- which we're calling Brooklyn Nouveau -- with a delicate balance of fruit, acidity, and low tannins, ready for immediate consumption.
Come on down on November 17 to enjoy French influenced food specials and live music, with full glasses of these seasonal wines. Or try all three in a flight featuring our very first “Brooklyn Nouveau.” No reservations needed -- just stop in and have fun.
Brooklyn Winery: 213 North 8th Street, Brooklyn NY, 11211
Beaujolais Nouveau Celebration: November 17, 2011 from 5:00pm till 12:00am
--Paul Brady, Brooklyn Winery Bartender and $25 Wine Class Instructor
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