Beaujolais Nouveau

“It’s the Beaujolais nouveau,” he said.

No, I don’t mean beaujolais nouveau, released on the third Thursday of November as a celebration of the recent harvest.

"The year has been quite hard weather-wise and the grapes have required more manual work than usual, only for us to end up losing around 30% of the harvest. That's too much work for such meagre results," said Beaujolais Nouveau winemaker Julien Revillon in Villie-Morgon, north of Lyon.

"In difficult periods, people hang onto traditions. Even during a war, we want to celebrate Christmas, even during a pandemic, we want to celebrate the Beaujolais Nouveau," he said.

Every autumn on the third Thursday of November, wine growers from the Beaujolais region market the first bottles of the year's harvest in the annual "Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé" campaign that started in the 1960s.