Beaujolais Nouveau!!!!

As if the wine fair wasn't enough for us, every year there is a celebration called the Beaujolais Noveau, created in the 80's to improve the popularity of the wine, the Beaujolais wine quickly became a victim of its own success. Many new vineyards were created as people tried to cash in on the increasing popualrity of the wine, and, as a result the quality suffered as inexperienced wine producers released poor quality wine, resulting in a very negative view of the wine world wide. However, the charlatons' vineyards began to close almost as quickly as the opened, leaving the original and best, passionate and proud vineyards who had a reputaion to uphold, and over the last decade, both the wine and its name is fighting back.

J and I have been lucky enough to taste a fair amount of the nouveau, and can confirm, its scruptious, as I type this I'm supping a 2007 Beujolais from Alain et Danile Germain's vineyard, Domain du Moulin Blanc from the village of Charnay http://www.domaine-du-moulin-blanc.com/.

The university organises a trip every year to a selection of the Beaujolais vineyards and then onto the town of Beaujeu for the opening night of the celebrations, the new wines are not released until midnight and it is marked with a procession through the streets, the burning of the oak wine barrels, a HUGE firework display and the fountains run with wine (sounded like a good old night to me!).

Louise was very kind and lent me her car for the evening so I could drive to Beaujeu and meet J and the others from the Uni. Needless to say when I arrived, some of the students had sampled a fair few of the previous years wine and were rather merry whereas some others (ehem...Sven..) were on the point of collapse-and it was only 7pm! The town itself is beautiful with large squares and a roaring river through the centre, all the bars were packed and people everywhere. By chance I had parked next to a British car and we bumped into its owners in one of the sample tents, they had driven all the way from Lancashire just to sample and stock up on the new wines and join in the clebrations - now that is commitment to the Beaujolais!

On the drive in I had noticed one or two rather swanky cars, Aston Martin DB7s and a DB8, TVRs, Porsches' a Lotus or two, Ferrari as well as a few Bentlys and Rolls - not the usual Renaults of the area! The reason for this became clear as we were chatting to a rather short Porsche owner (he was even shorter than me!!!) - every year at 6am they race back to London with a case each of the new wine to see who can get it back to the UK first to raise money for charity.

It was a (literally!) freezing night and I had driven through snow to get there so we shivered and huddled round the burning barrels before following the procession through the steets to the main square. At midnight the corks are litterly popped on hundreds of bottles and everyone gets a taste of the new wines while the fireworks light up the whole town.

It was a great show and really friendly with people passing round the bottles and filling up strangers glasses while brass bands played through the streets. Unfortunately as I was driving I only sampled a sip I left shortly after midnight with a tipsy J as my map reader to head back to the Innnes house. I wasn't too sad at missing out on trying the new wines as I had had a sneeky sample of three the night before - te he, one of the perks of living in a house surronded by vineyards!