Back in December I wrote about tasting a 2009 Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais Nouveau Villages. At that time I did not like the wine (as others attested at the time – my favorite being the review that called it tasting like “banana candy mixed in with a little finger nail polish” – See Back to Work!!!).
At the time I hypothesized that maybe the bottle just needed a little more time to age. Well back to my local liquor store to pick up another bottle, where the proprietor told me that Beaujolais Nouveau tasting yeasty is a very common complaint. He also pointed out that the “cork” was synthetic – so the wine would probably taste exactly the same.
He was right. First sniff and taste – yeast! A lot of it. Hiding the fruitiness of the wine.
So theory number 2 – how ’bout decanting? Decant it I did, letting it sit for about an hour. This helped a lot. While there were still traces of yeastiness, the fruit was much more evident. The wine was still only ok, but the decanting definitely helped.
I am, however, starting to think that the whole Beaujolais Nouveau concept is misguided. It sounds good on paper – a simple, fruity, young wine meant to be enjoyed young. The execution, for me, never lives up to the billing. I always get a young wine that tastes like it just barely finished fermenting that would have benefited from a little more care and aging. A couple more months of aging before bottling would probably do the wine a world of good… But then it wouldn’t be Nouveau, it would just be Beaujolais…
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