The Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation is dropping Beaujolais Nouveau, the fruity red wine it has released with fanfare every fall for more than two decades.
The provincial crown corporation said sales have dropped 30 percent since 2021.
“This is a business decision by the NSLC,” said spokeswoman Terah McKinnon.
“Over the last few years, we’ve seen fewer and fewer of our customers looking for this niche wine,” she told CBC News.
Beaujolais Nouveau sales were $79,478 for the year ending March 2021. They dropped to $71,478 in 2022 and $55,518 in 2023.
That’s a tiny fraction of the company’s wine sales, which totaled $164 million last year.
The red wine, from the Beaujolais region of France, is bottled immediately after harvest and typically hits NSLC stores in mid-November.
The decision does not surprise Mark Dewolf, sommelier and food and drink editor at Saltwire.
“The fact is that tastes are changing, and we’re seeing younger consumers move away from Beaujolais Nouveau, and the people who used to drink it are just getting older and there’s less of them,” DeWolf said. “So I think from a business standpoint, it just makes sense to gradually move away from it.”
He said producers from the Beaujolais region are also moving away from lower-quality nouveau to premium red wines that command a higher price.
The NSLC said a private wine store, Harvest Wines, owned by entrepreneur Mickey MacDonald, has expressed interest and will carry the product.
Bishop’s Cellar, another private wine store in Halifax, was offered Beaujolais Nouveau but decided not to carry it, instead stocking other red wines from the region, said president Matt Rogers.
