Calling all wine buffs

[El Gordo]

The bad news is that I can give a surprisingly full response to the original question.

Note: I didn't say useful or truthful response.

Beaujolais Nouveau, eh? OK....

First of all, I'll say that I'm a fan of Beaujolais in general. For someone (like me) who much prefers red wine to white, Beaujolais is a godsend on warm summer evenings, when you don't much fancy getting your teeth mixed up in one of those chewy, purpley New World jobs.

When I sold wine for a living, I shocked many a customer with the news that I'll repeat here: there's nowt wrong with sticking a bottle of Beaujolais in the fridge for an hour or two. A typical one has the sort of delicate fruit and light weight that lends itself well to such treatment, and is a real pleasure for the red wine enthusiast during the summer.

If you get real keen, move beyond the basic A.C. Beaujolais and try... well ,first off, A.C. Beaujolais Villages which has a spot more alcohol and character. But seriously, get into those actual villages...

Most people have heard of some of them, without realising that they're Beaujolais villages. Fleurie is the most famous, but there's Julienas, Morgon, St Amour, Brouilly, Mouilin A Vent.... and, er, about 5 more that I can't be bothered looking up.

When I worked in the wine business, nearly 20 years ago, the Beaujolais Nouveau thing was a major craze. I didn't realise it was still going now. The idea is/was that BN was the first wine of the year. So once the grapes were harvested around September time, instead of waiting for the following spring to bottle the wine, the Beaujolais producers would bypass the usual secondary fermentation and bottle early, taking their wine to market within a few weeks of the Gamay grapes being plucked from the vine.

It was mainly a marketing thing. The newspaper wine correspondents used to love reporting on which bars in Paris got the first delivery on November 15th -the official release date.

And then it spread to London, and to the UK in general.

When I worked in Manchester for Oddbins, I was delighted to find that my cynicism was noted in the Manchester Evening News. The day after Beaujolais Nouveau in 1983, they carried a large photo of my 'bincard' on our window display, which read "Made by the dependable 'media' method".

When I worked for Oddbins and Majestic, oh, oh.... oh how excited we got on November 15th. It was our Christmas come early. Prize winners would find themselves on trucks leaving Beaujolais at midnight, and making the long journey to the suburbs of London. I managed wine shops in Battersea and Wimbledon and Shepherds Bush during those, yawn, crazeee years, when the truck turning up at 8am was one of the year's highlights.

OK, so let's answer the question. A bottle of BN05 should be perfectly drinkable now. It is NOT a wine to keep. If the bot in question was from an earlier vintage, you might be out of luck but 11 months after the harvest, I reckon you're OK. You're particularly OK if it's made by one of the Beaujolais troopers like Drouhin or Georges Duboeuf. I don't know about 2005 conditions in Beaujolais, but in Bordeaux they were miraculous, so I'd hope that it might be a nice mouthful over that way too.

Uncork the beggar, and raise yer glass to QPR's first victory since February.