Fads are ridiculous

As someone who deliberately avoids flocking to whatever everyone else thinks is "in," I find this article fascinating:

Beaujolais Nouveau, hurried into bottles from grapes still growing on the vine 10 weeks ago, arrives in shops and restaurants in Britain and across the world today.

Does anyone care any more? Well, yes, the Japanese and Chinese do, unlike the British, or even the French.

One of the most successful marketing gimmicks of all time - the creation of a taste for "instant" or "fast" wine - seems to have run its course, in Europe at least.

Sales of Beaujolais nouveau in France have fallen by half in the past 10 years. Sales in Britain, once a key Beaujolais market, fell by 30 per cent in 2004 and have floundered ever since.

"Beaujolais Nouveau Day", the third Thursday in November, once generated stunts and excitable headlines. There were car or balloon races, even elephant and rickshaw races, to bring the first bottles to Paris, Britain, Belgium and Germany. No more.

Is Nouveau old hat? Even at the height of the Beaujolais boom in the 1970s and 1980s, old hats were among the politer suggestions made by critics for the possible contents of some (not all) of the gaily coloured "same year" bottles from the hills north-west of Lyons.

I've never quite understook why people are like lemmings running to the sea. Starbucks is a case in point.

Of course, I'm still wearing ties I bought in the '50s.