ITALY'S 'NOVELLO' WINE MAKES DEBUT
ITALY'S 'NOVELLO' WINE MAKES DEBUT
(ANSA) - Verona, November 3 - Everything is ready for the premiere of this year's Vino Novello, the Italian cousin of the better known French Beaujolais Nouveau, which takes place Thursday and Friday at the Verona trade fair grounds.
While the novelty of Novello has worn off in recent years and production continues to decline, the wine maintains a strong following and has carved out its own market niche.
The wine will be presented at a two-day 'Anteprima Novello' event which will see leading producers offer their wines to the public and, more important, to buyers, wholesalers, retailers, the leading distribution centers and restaurant operators.
Production of Novello this year is down some 4% over last year with 236 vineyards making the wine compared to 246 in 2008.
Over 400 vineyards were producing Novello in 2004 after its popularity peaked.
According to a poll take for the wine website winenews.it and Vinitaly, Italy's most important wine trade fair, Italian are almost split down the line over Novello.
The poll found that 49% of Italians buy one or two bottles of the new wine every year, while 51% refuse to try it, preferring more traditional wines.
Among those who buy Novello, 54% said they did so because the wine for them represented an 'autumn treat', something to put on their pre-Christmas tables along with mushrooms, chestnuts and freshly squeezed olive oil.
Another 25% said they bought the wine because they liked its taste, while 21% said Novello had become a rite, a seasonal tradition like panettone Christmas cake or a chocolate Easter egg.
Among those who do not buy Novello, most said they avoided it because they preferred traditional wines, others did not like its taste and some considered the new wine to be just a marketing gimmick by winemakers.
Vino Novello, which was officially recognised in 1987, traditionally makes it debut in the first week in November in order to get a jump on Beaujolais Nouveau.
Beaujolais cannot be opened until the third Thursday of November, this year November 19.
The popularity of Novello, especially among young people, is for the most part thanks to its clear red color, fruity taste and low alcoholic content, only 11%.
Novello, like Beaujolais Nouveau, is a light, fruity red wine which by law must be bottled within a year of the harvest, but in practice is bottled within a few weeks.
The fruity flavour of new wine is in part due to the fact that the juice of the grapes is not left too long with the grape skins which contain the chemical tannin.
This allows winemakers to blend several types of grapes and the wine can even be served chilled like white wines.
One of the main differences between Novello and Beaujolais is that several of the Italian wines retain some of the carbonation used to accelerate the fermentation process while the French Nouveau is traditionally flat.
The tradition of producing new wine began in the Beaujolais area of France's Burgundy region during the 1950s and caught on in Italy in the late 1990s.
