Beaujolais is one of those wines that everybody knows about but nobody drinks very much. Maybe the first real wine you tasted in your youth, it’s not one that often appears on your table, and you certainly don’t lay it down in your cellar. Beaujolais has its place in the world of wine; it is the anonymous, inexpensive carafon rouge you can find in any French bistro, by the glass or by the litre.
Beaujolais has earned this reputation honestly. For centuries, the vineyards of Beaujolais have been a well of wine, always cheap, always good, never great. And then there is Beaujolais nouveau, the first light quaffing wine of the new vintage. Once the subject of rejoicing when the vignerons heaped their grapes into great tubs atop ox carts, letting them ferment en route to thirsty Paris, arriving just as they finished fermenting; now a smooth marketing campaign with jumbo jets carrying the young wine in a coordinated sales plan to cities around the world on the 15th of November each year, with imitators in Italy and Canada and elsewhere putting out their own versions of nouveau or novello at the same time.
But there is another Beaujolais, a much better wine with solid, substantial fruit flavours, with surging ripe aromas and an easy laid-back attitude. These are the wines from ten named villages at the northern end of the Beaujolais region that are sold under their own names; indeed, sometimes you have to look hard to find the word Beaujolais anywhere on the bottle. These are the cru of Beaujolais: Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly, Chénas, Chirouble, Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin-à-Vent, Régnié and St.-Amour. You have to know these ten names and look for them on the main label. Of several I have tried lately, only one – a Morgon from the Domaine de la Garodière – proudly proclaims ‘Cru du Beaujolais’ on its front label. Most of the others – Domaine de Grand Garant from Fleurie, Domaine Dupré from Régnié – have that information in small print on the back label, and one – Domaine Mont Chavy from Morgon – does not say Beaujolais anywhere, front or back.
These are easy-drinking wines for summer barbecues. They are a gorgeous purple, and unlike most red wines, are bestserved lightly cooled, just what you want in summer heat. They are inexpensive, under $20 a bottle. These are unpretentious winesthat go best with unpretentious food, perfect for your barbecued chicken and grilled hamburgers. All are made exclusively with Gamay grapes, the unique variety that thrives on Beaujolais’ granite hills.
The Beaujolais region of France, in southern Burgundy, is the ideal place to experience the bucolic life-style of rural France. Seemingly from another era, the little villages come alive on market day, with the freshest, plumpest, ripest vegetables you have ever seen – sweet radishes to eat raw with baguette and butter, mushrooms both wild and cultivated, tomatoes bursting with summer sweetness. Renting a cottage here for a week is easy, inexpensive, and delightful – go to www.gites-de-france.fr to find listings for the entire country. And of course, the only wine you will drink while you are there will be Beaujolais!
So have a Beaujolais nouveau once a year if you like, just to honour the tradition; but seek out a sampling from these ten cru to see just how good this wine can be.
First published in Bayview Magazine, Thunder Bay, Canada