THIS SHIT TASTES LIKE JUICE!
(THIS SHIT WAS JUICE TWO MONTHS AGO)
Fête du Beaujolais Nouveau is a Swedish holiday too. If you don’t believe me, just look around this Thursday, there will be libations, there will be celebration. That goes for every wine-savvy part of the country, but I’m speaking on Malmö here because that’s what I know. And in Malmö, you have options. You can probably taste ten different glasses of Nouveau from ten different winemakers at ten different places if you really want to. The question is, do you want to? For some people, the answer is yes, to others it’s get that simple shit away from me. Like any good bartender, I’m just trying to facilitate a good time. Nouveau might not have the hottest reputation, but to me it will always be famous.
In France, Fête du Beaujolais Nouveau started as a celebration by the region’s vineyard workers to end the grape harvest. Nowadays it’s surpassed that as a full fledged phenomenon beginning at 00:01 on the third Thursday of November. Barrels of this barely two month old wine are tapped at vineyards all over Beaujolais, rolled through the streets of Lyon, and poured into jugs to be drunk by thirsty and eager onlookers. It wasn’t always this way. The success of this wine, like so many things, is tied to marketing. In the 50’s there was a publicized “race” by distributors to see who could get the wine to Paris fastest and in the 70’s the wine got a slogan, Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé! (The new Beujolais has arrived!). By the 1980’s the UK had fully adopted the holiday, with up to 700,000 bottles of Nouveau sold every year. The US soon followed, with Beaujolais sales rising to over 1,000,000 cases sold a year at its peak. I like to believe this is thanks to Herbie Hancock, who famously told people to “drink it young” and “enjoy it with hamburgers” on Bernard Erpicum’s straight-to-VHS “Celebrity Guide to Wine.”
OK, that’s not the reason the Beaujolais market took off, but it was a hilarious sign of the times. George Dubeouf is probably a better explanation, a huge Beaujolais producer and expert marketer who launched Nouveau in the US in 1982. Beaujolais Nouveau’s proximity to Thanksgiving also helped marketers align the two and sell bottles along with the obligatory holiday bird. “Goes great with turkey”, goes a long way apparently. These days, Nouveau isn’t looked at as fondly as it was, sales have dropped off significantly in the US and UK market, and Japan has overtaken both countries as the largest importer of Nouveau in the world. And while Sweden is too small of a country to ever claim that throne, they make up for it in an undying thirst for drink, in socially acceptable amounts and situations, that is.
Grapes grow in Sweden, but the French don’t drink their juice. That’s not how that relationship works. Swedes barely drink the wine made in Sweden, though new wineries are opening every year. With climate change raising global temperatures, southern Sweden might become a booming wine region one day, but for now they depend on the product of other countries, Beaujolais Nouveau included. This is probably for the best. Even if there was a Nouveau type wine made in Sweden, it would be illegal for vineyards to sell it directly to consumers and absolutely illegal to roll barrels of it through the streets. There’s an air of self-control throughout the Scandinavian nation, aided by the government’s monopoly on alcohol sales and a strong Lutheran tradition. The party has to adapt to the participants. Swedes always need a reason to drink, and Nouveau is just that. The country's Protestant work ethic usually reigns people in during the week, so getting shithoused on a Thursday in late November isn’t acceptable unless the French are doing it too.
Truthfully, I had never heard of Beaujolais Nouveau until I started in restaurants. Truthfully, when I did hear about it I thought, finally, some cheap wine in Sweden. Back when I had a job with a title, beverage manager of Casual Street Food in Malmö, we did our best to play along with the celebration. In 2020 we moved into a bigger space, going from a 50 capacity bar-service only burger joint to a 130 capacity table service, walk-in fridge having, upstairs office-ass full on restaurant restaurant. Our staff doubled and costs tripled along with the square footage. It was also the first year of COVID and as you might know, Sweden did not lock itself down. This isn’t the piece discussing the ethics of that choice, it happened, and as a restaurant we did our best to stay open. I remember thinking at the time, thank god I have a job, so I worked the beverage manager thing hard. Beaujolais Nouveau was part of that. We ordered four cases and priced them to sell. Our chef even made a sauce from the Nouveau and threw it on a burger with 12 month aged Beemster and caramelized onions. The Beaujolais Burger! Just like Herbie Hancock told us to do! It was a hit. The wait staff held a contest to see who could sell the most Bojo bottles, I think I won, I know I did, everyone else sucked at selling wine because I sucked at teaching them how to do it. Basically I rigged the contest, won a bottle of Nouveau and made everyone watch me drink it alone. I’m lying, I shared. We had a few bottles for closing drinks, then we walked our asses two blocks and half a park away to one of the drunkest, dumbest, and funnest parties I’ve ever been to.
Far i Hatten, a Malmö institution, has been hosting a Beaujolais Nouveau dinner and party since 2016. Ida Sundqvist, owner of Dryckesbutiken, the wine importer that supplies a lot of Hatten’s Nouveau, told me that even the first dinner drew a crowd. Her and Jonas Letelier, one of Hatten’s owners and sommelier's, designed a pairing, hired a dude to juggle fire, and DJed the party afterward.
They’ve been DJing the event every year since, except this year, Ida is visiting wineries and Ellen Almqvist, another owner and sommelier of Far i Hatten is stepping in. What’s on the setlist? Good vibes and a lot of hip-hop bangers, Ellen tells me. She calls Fête du Beaujolais Nouveau the New Year's Eve of wine, another holiday she absolutely loves. “What fills me with joy is that even though it is quite a silly tradition, people show up! People get excited!”, she says. She also fills me in on the wine they’re serving. At the beginning they were doing Nouveau from Lapierre, but lately the house Bojo is from Rémi & Laurence Dufaitre. You can also drink Nouveau from winemakers like Guy Breton, Foillard and Château de Grand Pré by the glass and there's plenty of older vintage Beaujolais Cru & Villages to be drunk, if young wine isn’t your thing.
It’s easy to see why this thing has gotten so big. Far i Hatten knows how to throw a party. As a bartender I was never able to make the dinner, but I rarely missed the festivities afterward. It became one of those things in Malmö to me, a reason to come together with hospitality people, lament the onset of winter, and yes, get fucked up on a Thursday. A lot of restaurant folk show up at the end of their shifts, because why not take a whole bottle of cheap gamay to the face? It’s only 10% ABV, and the shit goes down like juice.
In 2019 Far i Hatten had the Dufaitre Nouveau in magnums and key-kegs, right at the start of that in Sweden, and were filling up bottles for 15 bucks a pop. I can’t recall how many we had, it was a great night to remember forgetting. The following year we hit the dance floor like they were playing Tell Me When To Go on repeat and it was 2006 in the Yay. I think. My body remembers gigging, going stupid, gas-break-dipping just like E-40 taught me, even if my head can’t place exactly when it was. Every year blends together in my head. Every year is a great time. Every year contains as much regret as it does joy, the way a good party often does. To me, Hatten will always be the epicenter of this holiday, Rémi & Laurence Dufaitre will always be the winemakers I associate with Nouveau, and the image of my colleagues chugging wine straight from the bottle on the dance floor will live rent-free in my head forever. I even wrote a screenplay about it.
In Beaujolais, the gamay harvest starts, the gamay harvest ends, and in Sweden we drink the fruits of their labor. Nouveau is not a complicated wine, it’s direct, straight from the source and into your mouth. It’s honest, serves a purpose, facilitates a holiday and a level of excitement you don’t often see in Sweden, restrained as this country is. I fucking love it. So, if you’re in Malmö, go to one of these restaurants listed in the guide NOMO has so kindly put together. Grab a glass and drink. Look the person who serves you in the eye and say merci, tack, thank you, whatever. Don’t think about what’s in the glass, think about everything outside of it. Go to the party at Hatten after dinner. If you’re outside Sweden, then I hope they celebrate Nouveau in your city too. If they don’t, to paraphrase E-40 again, who, wine mogul that he is, will probably be enjoying a bottle himself: just imagine all the Swedes going dumb, dancing on top of clogs, and burning brightly.
The idea for this story came out of a conversation with
, Malmö’s Weekly Events Newsletter. The Beaujolais Nouveau guide is up on instagram now and coming to Substack later today. It’s a great resource for finding out what’s going on in the city on any given week.
Ah, the Beau! I introduced good pals to the ritual some decades ago. They have continued every since she introduced others. And so the shit goes on! Salut!
Cannot wait!❤