Slate picks apart the carefully crafted Beaujolais Nouveau phenomenon. I was surprised that the marketing for this wine (and the resulting races to be the first bar or restaurant with the vintage) didn't start until 1985, under the clever "King of Beaujolais Nouveau", Georges Duboeuf. A snippet from the article:

Why it was decided to make the region's humblest juice—a wine mainly borne of its worst vineyards, a wine barely removed from the fermentation vat, a wine that is nothing more than pleasantly tart barroom swill—its international standard bearer is a question that will undoubtedly puzzle marketing students for generations to come.

<-- metafilter