By Howard Hewitt, Columnist for TribTown

“Increasing wine knowledge requires stretching personal limits and tastes. The best advice received and repeated is to try different wines. Don’t hesitate to pop a cork on something new and embrace it.

And so that was my approach to France’s great gift to the holiday season, Beaujolais Nouveau. Any conversation about French wine starts with geography and ends with regulations — the French are really big on both.

The Beaujolais designation is north of Lyon, France, but very small. The region is just over 30 miles long and up to nine miles wide. But this tiny area packs in nearly 4,000 growers who nurture and harvest the Gamay grape.

Beaujolais Nouveau is a very light-bodied, fruity wine made to drink very young. The bottles on the shelves of your local wine retailer are made from the 2009 vintage and picked just a few weeks ago. By French wine laws, the wine is shipped and available for sale on the third Thursday of each November.

The wine’s selling point is its flexibility and drinkability.”

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