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Just want to get everyone prepared for November’s nice little gift.  No, not Thanksgiving, although that’s a wonderful thing, too.  I’m talking about that once-a-year, flash-in-a-pan, fun wine…beaujolais nouveau!  It is made from some of the first pickings of gamay noir grapes in any given year.  It’s light, full of a thin and refreshing juiciness, and is nice with a slight chill on it.  It’s the red wine for those who say they don’t like red wine.

It’s great to have a bottle or two around the holidays because it’s so easy to drink and goes well with party-time nibblers like assorted cheeses and nuts.  It also goes great with turkey, which is odd for a red wine (except for maybe some pinot noirs).  Be sure you sample some as soon as it comes out so you can figure out which ones you like best that year, and go back to buy as much as you think you’ll want/need.  It’s usually inexpensive, unless you find a “villages” you like.  And once it’s gone, it’s gone, never again to be the same.  So grab some of whatever beaujolais nouveau grabs you.  Shop early for it if you’re able so the selection will be good;  the nouveau is officially shipped out of Burgundy on November  3rd.

My favorite part about beaujolais nouveau is that in order to enjoy it while it’s in top form, it must be consumed between November and January.  After the new year, it loses its characteristic charms and becomes boring or unappealing, sometimes even downright vinegar-y.  Don’t hold it against your nouveau if this happens.  It’s typical.

Beaujolais grapes harvested later make a lovely wine that can age beautifully, like other Burgundy reds.  The nouveau uses only gamay noir a jus blanc, which refers somehow to a dark grape with a white juice.   The nouveau is a special, bright, young thing.  Give it a try!

Yesterday, after working all day and then hitting the gym, I stopped on my way home to buy a bottle of wine.  Tired and sweaty, I stood in front of a selection of varietal reds, ready to grab an old stand-by to go with the lasagna I was planning to make for dinner.

Chianti?  Maybe, but none of it looked at all intriguing.  Beaujolais?  We had that last week, plus the nouveau will be coming out in a couple of months.  Barolo?  Too expensive for light-weights like my husband and me…we never finish a bottle in one sitting anymore, and really good wine is never the same after being open for too long, I don’t care how good your vacuum-seal on it might be.   So Malbec, then?  Ah,  Malbec, how I love you, so self-assured and sexy, yet so unpretentious and forthright.  Argentinian Malbec is our absolute favorite, more so me than my husband, I think.  It’s like meeting a rough-and-ready gaucho in the countryside, then taking him to Buenos Aires and finding out he’s a tango champion as well.

I was getting more impatient with myself by the second.  I couldn’t justify spending more than $10 on a bottle…it was for a Thursday night lasgana, right?  But I felt annoyed that we seemed to keep on drinking the same wine over and over, so what if we liked it?  But I was in a hurry, too…Aargh!  I grabbed a bottle of Valpolicella impulsively, paid for it, made my way home, and promptly forgot about it until it was time for dinner.

 My husband opened it just a minute before we sat down, we took a couple of bites, toasted each other and…the Valpolicella was GOOD!  Not great, but really good, light in the mouth and very easy on the tannins,  which was nice with the red sauce on the lasagna (it had plenty of it’s own acid).  The bottle claimed notes of cherries, berries, and almonds, but I honestly wasn’t catching anything more than a sheer fruitiness that rode on top of a decent amount of alcohol.  In short, just right for a Thursday night lasagna.

The moral of the story?  Try a completely different wine once in a while, letting impulse and impatience be your guide.  You’re guaranteed to learn something or find something new.  You might love it, you might hate it.  Just be sure you don’t pay too much for it.   Unless you’re wealthy, which we and most others are not, it can be totally demoralizing to spend a fortune on crappy wine.  I’ve got this story about a Vouvray…but that’s for another day.