Hungarian Beaujolais Nouveau

New wine has started to become a fad in Hungary over the past years. I am not going to spend a lot of time on this as I am not a huge fan of this category. Beaujolais Nouveau is the predominant vin de primeur, new wine, in France. It is made from the Gamay grape and they use a unique fermentation process called carbonic maceration. This means they do not crush the grapes, but ferment them the way they are harvested. This wine is drinkable, that is if you like this kind of stuff, just a few weeks after harvest.

The past few years you are seeing more and more “Uj Bor”, new wine, on the market in Hungary. Some of these are made in the Beaujolais Nouveau style, yet some use more traditional malolactic fermentation (much more typical in Europe.) One of the better new wines is St Andrea’s Uj Bor. Instead of Gamay, they use local varietals such as Kekfrankos, but they do make the wine using the carbonic maceration process and it does resemble Beaujolais Nouveau. St Andrea’s Uj Bor 2007 does taste new. It is not bad, but don’t expect much complexity or finish. It is very fruity, super simple, with small to medium weight (which to me is important as super light with no structure is a really bad combination) and a lot of freshness. Despite being a red wine, you drink it chilled. I am not sure if it is to suppress the taste with the cold temperature or to enhance its freshness

Anyways, I do not think I will be buying a lot of these, but it is definitely worth a try one time.

Name: St Andrea, Uj Bor, 2007

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Body: Light to Medium

Price: 12 euros (retail price 5 euros)

Got it at: Gerloczy Kavehaz, Budapest, Hungary