Beaujolais Nouveau - Young wine is meant to be gulped

the movie "The Jerk," Steve Martin saunters into a restaurant and insists that the waiter bring him a bottle of "new" wine. Moviegoers, especially those brought up on those television commercials featuring a corpulent Orson Welles intoning that Paul Masson would sell no wine before its time, laugh at his stupidity. But the truth is that the majority of wines are made to be drunk when relatively young and that only a few wines, about 3 percent according to wine consultant Bob Chaplin, are designed to improve with age.

Tomorrow marks the release date of the wine intended to be drunk the youngest of all: Beaujolais Nouveau. On the third Thursday in November, in accordance with French law, this first wine of the harvest in France's Beaujolais region can be sold. Just weeks before, it was a bunch of grapes growing in the vineyard.

There is no wine more French than Beaujolais. As wine authority Oz Clarke puts it, it conjures up "visions of bucolic, moustachioed Frenchmen with obligatory beret and blue-and-white striped tee-shirt." Consequently, the release of the new Beaujolais is cause for celebration in France and nowadays all over the world. Millions of bottles of the stuff will be distributed around the globe to people eager to be among the first to try the new vintage.

But the people of the Beaujolais region and the nearby city of Lyon, the birthplace of the bistro, have been engaging in the post-harvest ritual of Beaujolais Nouveau long before the rest of the world noticed. Indeed, the wine flowed so freely that it has been said that Lyon has three rivers: the Rhone, the Saône, and the Beaujolais.

The nearly 4,000 grape growers in the 34-mile long and 9-mile wide region of Beaujolais can trace their craft at least as far back as Roman times. In Brouilly and Morgon, two of the top producers of Beaujolais, there is still evidence today of Roman vineyards planted in the first century B.C. by Caesar's army. The region gets its name from the town of Beaujeu, which was ruled by the Dukes of Beaujeu until 1400. From a winemaking perspective, it began to develop a unique identity distinct from northern Burgundy when in 1395 Philippe the Bold, calling it a "disloyal plant," decreed that the Gamay grape, the only one used in the making of Beaujolais, could no longer be cultivated in Burgundy proper which instead would rely on the Pinot Noir. Climate and soil variations as well as the fact that its wines are harvested entirely by hand also make Beaujolais unique as does the style of vinification used there, the Beaujolais Method, which extracts maximum color and aroma from the red grape without the astringency usually associated with red wine. In fact, Beaujolais Nouveau is about as close to white wine as red wine can get. Thus, it is usually served slightly chilled.

Consequently, some wine connoisseurs tend to scorn it, even calling it "lollipop" wine. And there is no question that its success is due as much, or more, to clever marketing than to its quality. Granted it does not have the pedigree to be a "serious" wine, but its unpretentiousness is a significant part of its appeal. It's a wine to be gulped with gusto rather than sipped with seriousness. As Clarke notes, "You should be knocking it back so fast and so carelessly that you haven't time to ponder the taste." Moreover, as Ronn Wiegand writes in Nation's Restaurant News, "The publicity surrounding Beaujolais Nouveau often obscures the fact that the wine is a delicious, celebratory wine, a first taste of the recent harvest, as it were, and a prelude to the better wines to come."

The wine is often described as lively, fruity, friendly, charming, straightforward, uncomplicated, easy to drink, light-hearted, festive, a wine to be drunk with a smile. It goes well with pate, grilled vegetables, sausage, barbecue, roast chicken, light cheeses, soups, stews, and pastas and it can be a principal ingredient in dishes as diverse as coq au vin and poached pears. Because it is not strongly flavored it goes well with all kinds of food, especially turkey.

That's why Doug Hileman, the knowledgeable manager of the wine department at Schnucks, recommends it for Thanksgiving dinner. After all, what better wine to celebrate a holiday about the harvest than the first wine of the harvest? Not all wine produced in Beaujolais, of course, is Beaujolais Nouveau. The heartier wines produced in the northern end of the region in the Beaujolais-Villages and especially in the top villages given "cru" status are of a distinctly higher quality and can, as Robert Joseph, the author of "French Wine," notes, go better with food than a 90-plus-point Cabernet. Moreover, they are invariably reasonably priced. But what Clarke says about Beaujolais Nouveau is also true: "Sometimes on a lazy summer Sunday lunchtime, or a foggy November night, or at any café table from Paris to Marseilles, it can be, just for a fleeting moment, the best red wine in the world."

As Julia Child notes, this is probably the most famous of all French chicken dishes. Originally it was a method for cooking old roosters (coq is the French word for rooster) to make them palatable. This recipe, adapted from "The New Basics Cookbook" by Sheila Lukens and Julee Rosso, uses the microwave to create in just 30 minutes a dish that tastes like it's been simmering on the stove for hours. Note that recipe times are for a 650-700 watt microwave. More cooking time may be needed for ovens with less power.

Coq Au Vin

2 slices bacon

1/2 pound mushrooms

20 pearl onions

2 cloves garlic

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1 chicken (3-4 pounds)

1 cup chicken stock

1 cup young Beaujolais

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1/2 teaspoon salt freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons flour

Cut the bacon into 1-inch pieces and place in microwave-safe casserole. Cook at full power in a 3-quart casserole for 3 minutes. Trim stems from mushrooms, peel onions, mince garlic and add along with herbs to casserole. Stir in and cook 2 minutes. Cut chicken into eight pieces and arrange on top with breasts in center and legs, thighs, and wings around the edge. Combine stock, wine, and tomato paste and pour over chicken. Cover and cook 12 minutes. Remove chicken and vegetables with a slotted spoon and keep warm. Season sauce with salt and pepper. Remove 1/4 cup sauce and whisk in flour until smooth. Whisk back into remaining sauce and cook, uncovered, for 2 minutes. Return chicken to casserole, arrange vegetables on top, cover, and cook 7 minutes. Let dish stand 3 minutes before serving. Serves 4.

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