The party may be over for Beaujolais Nouveau Thursday (Feature)

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Nov 20, 2008, 1:07 GMT

Paris - As has been the custom every year since 1985, shortly after midnight French time on the third Thursday of November 2008, wine drinkers around the world celebrated the new vintage of the Beaujolais Nouveau.

But this year's party may have been celebrated with a little less gusto than usual in the French wine-growing region of Beaujolais, as sales of the light, fruity wine continued to fall abroad.

'It's clear, exports are falling. They have been falling for years. And this year we are again selling less abroad,' said Bernard George, director of exports at Georges Duboeuf, France's largest Beaujolais merchant.

Jean-Louis Berges, general director of the large wine trading house Boisset, agreed that the wine's future as a money-making product was less than rosy.

'It is becoming more and more of a non-event,' he said. 'There is a growing disinterest in the wine in many countries.'

The Beaujolais Nouveau phenomenon began as a local wine-maker's custom and then grew, through a brilliant marketing strategy, into a global success story, with some 62 million bottles sold at its peak, in 1998.

A 'premature wine' that is fermented for only a few weeks, Beaujolais Nouveau was originally produced so that local wine-growers and their friends could celebrate the end of the Beaujolais harvest.

However, some wine merchants, such as Georges Duboeuf, soon recognized its marketing potential, and they set up a race to Paris to deliver the first bottles of the wine to the capital.

By 1970, this had become a national event. By 1985, the release of the Beaujolais Nouveau was an international ritual, with the third Thursday in November established as the official delivery date.

In the 1990s, the phenomenon spread to Asia, where it became an overnight smash, particularly in Japan.

At its height, in 2004, the Japanese consumed 12.4 million bottles of the wine. But in 2007, it was down to 8.26 million bottles. This year, sales in Japan are expected to fall by another 20 per cent, to about 6.5 million bottles.

According to George, a number of factors have contributed to the decline of the wine's popularity in Japan, including a new zero- tolerance drunk driving law.

In addition, he said, 'The Japanese bought too much of the wine last year and had bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau still on their shelves in May. This year they are buying just enough to sell out by Christmas, so they can have room on their shelves for Champagne.'

But the negative trend is not exclusive to Japan. Sales have fallen in most of its traditional foreign markets. In the United States, for example, sales declined from an estimated 4 million bottles in 2002 to 2.5 million last year.

In Germany, once the wine's second-largest export market, the turnaround has been even more dramatic. In 2002, Germans consumed 7 million bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau; in 2007, that number had shrunk to just 2.1 million.

While no specific numbers are yet available for this year, both George and Berges said that the drop in foreign sales compared to 2007 will be at least 10 per cent, and perhaps as high as 20 per cent.

A number of factors have contributed to the decline of the fad. Perhaps most importantly, the rise of the euro against the dollar and yen and the rising cost of transporting the wine because of high oil prices have made it increasingly more expensive abroad.

But, Berges said, 'the wine-makers can not lower the price. It is a question of survival for them.'

In addition, many wine connoisseurs consider it a gimmick product at best, and rank swill at worst. One wine critic, Karen MacNeil, compared drinking Beaujolais Nouveau to eating cookie dough.

Berges said that wine-drinking habits were changing, and that there were 'fewer occasional wine drinkers' who in the past seized the opportunity of the event to consume a wine that is easy to enjoy.

Anne Masson, spokeswoman for Inter-Beaujolais, the marketing board for Beaujolais wines, admitted that while sales were rising in small developing markets, such as China, South Korea and the Czech Republic, they were down in the larger markets.

As a result, she said, '300,000 hectoliters less Beaujolais Nouveau is produced each year.'

Berges said that there was 'very little money these days in selling Beaujolais Nouveau.'

Asked if this meant the end of the wine as a commercially viable product, he said that it was too soon to tell.

'What we can say is that it is declining, and that it will be difficult to relaunch,' he said. 'And one day, in the not-too-distant future, it could be over.'