Street art Beaujolais Nouveau revives a great business story

Matthew DeBord

Is has arrived! And this time, the Beaujolais Nouveau gets a rad street art label. Move over, flowers and colorful abstractions! Wine marketing marches on!

In the wine world, the third Thursday in November is a small big deal. That's because it's when the Beaujolais Nouveau, the first French wine of the current vintage (2011 in this case), hits bars, stores, and restaurants. This is all an outgrowth of the fact that when the Beaujolais Nouveau originally appeared in France, it was an excuse to indulge in a wine-soaked harvest hootenanny.

The wine itself is nothing to write home about: it's a light, thin, fruity red, designed to be made fast and drunk even faster (Allez!). But it's become something of the Thanksgiving institution in the U.S., given that it shows up right before Turkey Day.

The King of Beaujolais, Georges Duboeuf, dispatches many thousands of colorfully labeled bottles of his now-world-renowned Beaujolais by boat and plane to the far-flung corners of the globe.

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