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On Beaujolais Nouveau Day, We Talk Thanksgiving Wine Pairing and 'Natural' Wines

Hajime Nakano
/
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A glass of Beaujolais Nouveau

The third Thursday of every November is the day that Beaujolais Nouveau is released. It’s a marketing gimmick embraced by pre-holiday revelers world-wide, and the wine itself can be seen as a sneak peek of the current vintage from the Beaujolais region of France.

 

But, for more serious wine fans, it’s a reminder of the other Beaujolais — the more traditional version — and the 10 Crus which produce a palate and wallet-pleasing alternative to out-of-reach Burgundy. 

It also begs the question: “What is tradition in wine?”

Early-release wines have been micro-traditions in small villages around the world for centuries, but it wasn’t until Parisians embraced the Nouveau marketing several decades ago that anybody knew about it. 

We’ll talk with Peter Rizzo of Natural Wines of Naples about a new emergence from dusty tradition to trend: “natural” wines. The term natural on a wine bottle carries a lot more weight than on a box of granola bars, and Peter will walk us through what makes a wine “natural.”

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.