Beaujolais LOVES Pate!

Each year, the third Thursday of November is the day that Beaujolais Nouveau is released.

What’s the big deal? Beaujolais nouveau is the first wine of the vintage! A red wine made with Gamay grapes grown in the Beaujolais region of France and fermented for a few weeks and then bottled 6-8 weeks following harvest, on the day of release, Beaujolais Nouveau celebrations used to include races to get the wine delivered around the world. These days, it’s shipped in advance but no one may sell it until after midnight.

As fresh, fruity, and fun as Beaujolais nouveau is, there’s a lot more to the region of Beaujolais than nouveau wine!

Like the bright nouveau, gamay from Beaujolais is also fresh and fruity with plentiful tart cranberry fruit. Recently, Sue and I opened three Beaujolais which we paired with coq a vin because this November, the French Winophiles are exploring the Beaujolais region. We found that this wine LOVES creamy foods like pate as well as the succulent, rich coq a vin (which is easier to make than you might think!)

While we usually post on the third Saturday of the month, in November we are publishing early to help call attention to the region and in particular the non-nouveau wines but some of us, like myself and Wendy, are publishing two posts! There’s a lot of great information about Beaujolais in these posts so I hope you’ll click the links and check them out.

• Jill from L’Occasion shares “No Sleep ’til Beaujolais: The French Wine That’s Keeping Us Up All Night“ 
• Martin from Enofylz writes “Ready To Elevate Your Beaujolais Game? Go Beyond Nouveau!”
• Lynn from Savor the Harvest writes “Beaujolais Beyond Nouveau”
• Rob from Odd Bacchus shares “Beaujolais Reassessed“ 
• Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm writes “Say Yay for Beaujolais“ 
• Jane from Always Ravenous shares “Beaujolais Wine: A Foodie’s Dream”
• Nicole from Somms Table writes “Cooking to the Wine: Stephane Aviron Cru Beaujolais with Pork Tenderloin While Jumping Life Hurdles“
• Lauren from The Swirling Dervish shares “Thanksgiving for Two: Mushroom-Stuffed Pork Loin Paired with Beaujolais Cru”
• Jeff from Food Wine Click! shares “Tasting the Beaujolais Pyramid over Dinner”
• Liz from What’s in that Bottle invites us to “Discover Real Beaujolais”
• Cam of Culinary Adventures with Camilla tells us about her “Top of the Central Coast; My Beaujolais Pairing Dinner”
• and here on Wine Predator we ask “Do you know the way to Beaujolais?” not once but twice!

Check out our blogs and I will update this list as everyone gets their posts published between today and Saturday. Join us at 8am Pacific time Saturday Nov. 18 for our chat on twitter about the Beaujolais we tasted and the foods we paired with these wines.

You just might get some ideas for your Thanksgiving or other holiday meals! With its tendency toward cranberry notes, you can imagine that Beaujolais pairs well with turkey!

And a special thanks to my spouse for surprising me with this beautiful bouquet that greeted me on my return from the Wine Bloggers Conference just in time for a birthday dinner for our son!