Beaujolais Day

November 21, Thursday

Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes

This "Beaujolais Day" is accompanied by publicity events and heavy advertising. The traditional slogan, even in English-speaking countries, was "Le Beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!" (literally, "The new Beaujolais has arrived!"), but in 2005 this was changed to "It's Beaujolais Nouveau Time!". In the United States, it is promoted as a drink for Thanksgiving, which always falls exactly one week after the wine is released (on the fourth Thursday of November).

In the United Kingdom, Beaujolais Day is particularly popular in Swansea, Wales, where people book tables in restaurants and bars for the day up to a year in advance. Historian Peter Stead argues that its rise in popularity there can be traced to the city's No Sign Bar in the 1960s, which was then owned by former Wales rugby union captain Clem Thomas, who owned a house in Burgundy and could transport Beaujolais quickly and cheaply to south Wales, and suggests that it reflected Swansea's efforts to "gentrify and intellectualise itself" at the time. In 2015 it was estimated that Beaujolais Day contributed £5 million to the local economy.