Le Beaujolais is a region of France famous for its wine of the same name. Not far from Lyon, it is a country region of rolling hills and small towns. Visiting Le Beaujolais means not only seeing the countryside but visiting a vineyard, and there are many to choose from.

Le Beaujolais is a beautiful, if rural, area. Above are two shots of a vineyard that I visited in 2002. Below are two shots of a different vineyard that I visited in 2003.

The vineyards of Le Beaujolais will typically give guided tours and lecture on their process of cultivating grapes and turning them into wine. Some vineyards will show you the grapes, talk, and then go inside to drink. Others will show you the grapes, talk, walk you through a large industrial processing plant, show and discuss the devices for separating the juice from the rinds and for fermenting wine (including large vats and conveyor belts and the like), and even play a video for you -- in addition to serving you wine. When visiting the vineyards, free samples of wine are always provided and liberally taken. Bottles from the most common to the most expensive are available for purchase, typically at far lower prices than in stores since all middlemen are cut out of the deal.

The vineyards of Le Beaujolais are quite amenable to group tours, which are more economical: they only have to lecture and give the tour once, yet there may be dozens more chances for purchases. Here is part of the group with which I went in 2002, outside on the left and inside, drinking to be sure, on the right.

A few decades ago, the only beaujolais available was red, with white being preserved only for local consumation. Now white and rosé beaujolais are available, though red is certainly still dominant. Wine is, of course, a booming business and both France and beaujolais are riding the wave.

Of course, while the region is famous for its wine, people also do live in Le Beaujolais who don't make wine or live on a vineyard. The region has its small towns, often with a lot of charm ... for a few hours or a day. The inhabitants of small towns are less likely to know other languages and less likely to feel at home if a swarm of tourists descends upon them. And, of course, the population is older because the young tend to move to cities. But these are, like many small towns in France, quaint places with interesting local stores and many old buildings (since such towns haven't expanded in quite some time).

	Here we have three shots of a small town in Le Beaujolais that I visited in 2002. On the upper-left is just a general shot showing the street. On the upper-right is the local church, several hundreds of years old, preserved by the state, and quite beautiful. To the left, we have a local place where sincerely old men were gathered to play pétanque, a traditional French game played on the ground with heavy metal balls -- a game that, while quite enjoyable, is generally lost on the young French.

Le Beaujolais is nice to visit, particularly for its vineyards and to get a feel for the area. Having done that, and had a pleasant time, one doesn't feel any great need to return. This probably explains the declining village population. Still, it's a nice way to combine a sense of rural France with free wine -- and who can complain about that.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT THIS TIME

Sorry that it's been a while since the last column. The war on Iraq and the concomitant polital climate, often filled with horrible and hostile arguments on all sides, really has taken a lot out of me. But, you know, it's an occasional column. And other stuff has been posted to the site in the meantime. So I won't feel too guilty about all those columns I've been contemplating and writing in my head and starting on paper.

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See Apollonian Bacchanalia #32, the first of this series.

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