France will celebrate the New Wine Year

Every third Thursday of November, which in 2009 is 19 of November, in France for more than 55 years has been celebrated the New Year. Villas in France near Lyon are filled with hundreds of tourists in order to participate in the New Year celebrations, which, however, have little in common with the classic New Year. The center of this funny action is a small region in eastern France near Lyon - Beaujolais, and the holiday is called Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! (Beaujolais - Nouveau has arrived!).

The fact is that with such a cry on 19 of November at midnight will be announced the coming of the New Wine Year. There will be opened bottles with young “Beaujolais” wine of the 2009 year - the very first wine of this year. And although the regional winemakers produce wine for several hundred years, only in 1951 they were allowed to sell Beaujolais - Nouveau earlier than others. This happened for several reasons. Gamay is the only sort of grape from which the Beaujolais - Nouveau is made, which differs from others by very early ripening, and thanks to the modernizing of the winemaking (carbon maceration), the wine of this sort ripens before anyone else. Because of this Beaujolais winemakers tend to, outpacing the competitors, release the Nouveau wine as early as possible to the market. Sometimes they even used counterfeiting, when the Beaujolais Nouveau (the last year’s one) began to be sold in September (!), i.e. before the end of the harvest. Then the Department of Agriculture of France introduced a decree, which allowed the beginning of the sale of Beaujolais Nouveau everywhere only on the same day - the third Thursday of November.

Since then the third Thursday of November is celebrated as "the Day of Winemaker" in the whole country and there is an opportunity to assess how good grape harvest was this year. By tradition the start of the celebration is decided by the Bozo winemakers. With torches from the vine they solemnly march to the town square, where is already installed the barrel with a young wine and exactly at midnight after a 12th strike of the St. Nicholas church bell the fireworks on the City Hall Square will announce the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau and the opening of the barrels . Recently, Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrive! Became known outside the territory of France and it is now celebrated in Japan, Germany, USA, Russia and many other countries.