The French Government takes their country’s gourmet reputation seriously: by law, the first bottle out of France ’s vineyards each year, le Beaujolais Nouveau, can’t be uncorked until the third Thursday of November. So today, all over France, and anywhere in the world where Francophiles and/or wine-bores can be found, there will be people eating baguettes and drinking gallons of cheap red wine. Some 60 million bottles of the stuff will be consumed by the end of the day, all to the delight of Georges Duboeuf, Monsieur Beaujolais himself, who transformed the day from a regional post-harvest tradition into a global phenomenon to bolster sales of his mediocre flowery labeled vintages. The point, of course, isn’t the wine – which is thin, fruity and shouldn’t be kept past six months – but having a party to celebrate the first drinkable product of the past summer’s grapes, and to drive back the winter chill. Think of it as Thanksgiving for winos.

Elsewhere:
– “Ahead: Beaujolais Nouveau” (NYT)
– “A little beau peek” (Chicago Tribune Metromix)

(image via kikoosland’s photostream)