November in France: where Beaujolais Nouveau is still celebrated
The contentious wine brings parties in the south-west, while Paris parades its single women in silly hats this month, says France magazine's Carolyn Boyd
For decades it’s been one of the few reasons to celebrate the gloomy month of November; the French, as well as anyone in the UK, US or Japan who’s looking for an excuse to party, are getting ready to celebrate 2008’s batch of Beaujolais Nouveau.
The festival kicks off in the village of Beaujeu on November 19, where the first bottles are released at one minute past midnight. A candlelit procession then weaves through the town in tribute to the hard work that went into the grape harvest. It’s accompanied by fireworks, a dinner and, of course, much dégustation (tasting, that is) of the chilled, cloudy wine.
There are celebrations all over France and Parisians in particular have always been fans. When I visited Montmartre last November, purple balloons adorned most cafes and restaurants I went into. Our food columnist Rosa Jackson recommends the all night wine bar / bistro Le Tambour as a great place to celebrate the event: “It serves great steak-frites and onion soup,” she says.
Away from the festivities, the product isn’t without its critics. It was first mass marketed by Georges DuBoeuf in the 1970s and many consider it a way of off-loading mediocre wine on to the public at inflated prices. Certainly, the expats on our forum are pretty scathing about it: "Woolybanana" says: “We did have some a few years ago but it tasted like a mixture of dog dung and furniture polish.”
Our wine reviewer Sally Easton tells me a handful of winemakers in Beaujolais are trying to shake off the nouveau tradition as they believe it is over-shadowing the top vintages.
In the UK Beaujolais Nouveau might also have had its day. Our wine columnist Dominic Rippon points out that the cheap plonk market for young people has largely been replaced by the New World Wines, “this is not so much the case in France so its popularity persists locally,” he says.
In the US, 75-year-old DuBoeuf continues to hype its arrival and will be leading the celebrations in New York on November 20 with a motorcade of chefs on motorbikes (the "Beaujolais Bikers") as they deliver the wine to uncorking ceremonies and celebratory lunches.
The product is often served as an accompaniment to Thanksgiving dinner, proving that it’s still a popular party guest.
Indeed, despite the criticisms, I believe that anything that gives cause for any community to get together to have a tipple and enjoy delicious nibbles such as walnuts, parma ham, pâtés seems a good idea to me. That said, I’ll leave it to the Japanese to bathe in Jacuzzis filled with the stuff (picture 4).
Talking of strange behaviour, anyone who spots young women with bizarre headwear in Paris at the end of November will discover that it isn’t a result of too much wine, but an effort to get them "off the shelf".
Writer Régine Godfrey tells me this tradition, dedicated to Saint Catherine (patron saint of spinsters), means unmarried women aged 25 before November 25 wear an extravagant hat “decorated with symbolic objects of the girl’s profession and include green and yellow for 'faith and hope' as the bridal white is eluding her”.
Events include a pilgrimage to the saint's statue, a hat parade and a dinner dance where presents are given to the Catherinettes. Apparently at St Catherine's spring in Lyons-La-Forêt, Haute-Normandie, you can find the delightful poem every Catherinette learns by heart in order to find a suitable husband. You have to wonder if a night on the town drinking the Beaujolais Nouveau might be more fruitful.
Along with the husband hunters, game hunters are coming out in force in the Alpes-Maritimes where author of the Olive Tree series Carol Drinkwater is gearing up for her olive harvest. The hunting season continues to February, until when bands of men with rifles venture into the countryside hoping to bag a wild boar, which are apparently considered a nuisance in these parts. Writer Mark Sampson, who lives in the Lot department, tells me the hunters are notoriously trigger-happy, particularly after a snack lunch of red wine and salami sausage. He’ll be spending Toussaint (the All Saints’ Day public holiday) indoors.
Finally, those heading over to France to mark Armistice Day – this year’s 90th anniversary of the end of World War I – might also consider a visit to the new De Gaulle museum in Champagne-Ardenne. According to Rosemary Bailey, author of Love and War in the Pyrenees, it tells the story of De Gaulle’s influence on France and “is state of the art with lots of fancy lighting, music, photographs, films and recordings to listen to, a reconstructed First World War trench.”