If ever there was a way to combat any ensuing autumnal blues, a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau is surely one of them. The style is fruity, joyful and fresh – a perfect partner for almost any meal and certainly excellent for just drinking by itself.

A great contrast to the more heavy and complex wines that we may turn our glasses towards as the weather becomes chillier.

With only a matter of weeks between harvest and bottling, there is always a certain sense of anticipation and energy surrounding this “new wine” which will be the very first possible moment for us to experience what this year’s vintage has to offer.

Fresh, fruity and light with intense aromas of small red fruits with just the right amount of sweetness and acidity.

This year, we are shipping nouveau from Château de Belleverne at La Chapelle de Guinchay, 3km east of Chenas. Brothers Didier and Alain Bataillard own vineyards in the Villages plain as well as in the Crus of Juliénas, Chénas, St Amour and Moulin à Vent.

The grapes are harvested from vines planted on an array of different terroirs: siliceous clay (St Amour), granite (Chenas) and limestone, all scattered in a beautiful playground of 36 hectares (originally 8 hectares when the family took over the property in 1969.

Beaujolais Nouveau owes its easy drink style to the wine-making process, carbonic maceration, also called whole berry fermentation. This technique preserves the fresh, fruit quality of the wine, without extracting bitter tannins from the grape skins, the result a fun light red wine with bags of fruit traditional drunk slightly chilled.

At one past midnight on the third Thursday of each November, from little villages and towns like Romanèche-Thorins, over a million cases of Beaujolais Nouveau begin their journey through a sleeping France to Paris for immediate shipment to all parts of the world. Banners proclaim the good news: Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! "The New Beaujolais has arrived!" One of the most frivolous and animated rituals in the wine world has begun.

By the time it is over, over 65 million bottles, nearly half of the region's total annual production, will be distributed and drunk around the world. It has become a worldwide race to be the first to serve to this new wine of the harvest. In doing so, it has been carried by motorcycle, balloon, truck, helicopter, Concorde jet, elephant, runners and rickshaws to get it to its final destination. It is amazing to realize that just weeks before this wine was a cluster of grapes in a growers vineyard. But by an expeditious harvest, a rapid fermentation, and a speedy bottling, all is ready at the midnight hour. By French law, Beaujolais Nouveau is to be released no earlier than the third Thursday of November.

Drink chilled with a selection of French cheeses and friends! (the friends don't have to be French....!)