BARGING THROUGH FRANCE PT 9 - BEAUJOLAIS

I arrived in Villaefranche, the capital of the Beaujolais on my old tug, the Regina to witness a very curious ceremony which I imagine must be unique. Conscription in France started in 1792 and the Wave or La Vague in French started in Villefranche 160 years ago. The men folk are split up into groups of conscripts for every ten years and they all get a different coloured ribbon to tie round their top hats. Recruits or first 10 years get green ribbons, yellow for guys between 30-40 years, red for between 50-60 yeas, blue 60-70 years, mauve 70-80 years, 80-90 years blue, white red and over 90 years you get to ride in a car.
The idea is that everyone carries a bunch of mimosa with red carnations in it and then they dance down the main street of Villefranche to commemorate their society and then they give their posies to the mothers, wives or girlfriends. Everybody has a good breakfast of lentils cooked with ham and Montbeliard sausage and lentils and washed down with litres of Beaujolais the wine of the terroir. Because everyone is well oiled before they start dancing down the street they all find it easy to form the endless wave. This society dedicates itself to doing good works and helping others when not dancing up and down the main drag.

Then we watch how the vines in the Beaujolais are pruned. A good pruner can do 800 metres of vines a day making 15,000 cuts. Vines are no good in damp ground I was told. Then I stayed with Isabelle at her bed and breakfast. She explained about terroir again and about how richly endowed the Beaujolais is with every kind of good produce. Isabelle's father had been a butcher and so she passed her exams to make all kinds of pate and sausages as a charcutiere. The famous Beaujolais Nouveau can be drunk at midnight on the third Wednesday of November. A very good marketing ploy, which works right around the world.

Madame Callow runs a village grocery and bar. She is famous for her omelettes. She told me she used three eggs per person but the trick was in the way you bear the eggs. All I can say is that her omelette was extremely good to eat.

The Chateau de la Chaise has the largest wine cellar in the Beaujolais. Then I visit Emmanuel, one of 6 brothers who farms the family farm where they have been for the last 150 years. Emmanuel has a special call for his cows and his horses which he demonstrates. He also lets his baby goats out of their pen for the first time. He explains that all the wine in the Beaujolais is made from the Gamay grape but it tastes different depending on which terroir it is grown. He demonstrates the difference between Beaujolais Village and Beaujolais which grow on fields not 500 yards distant.

A stone cutter who repairs stone church windows around the place shows how he makes mullions. He tells us the stone quarries are getting fewer and fewer. The mayor of Marcy is quite a card and probably a very good mayor. Under the town hall he has what he calls his decision room and he explains that when there is difference been the councillors, they all retire to his decision room in the cellar where it is not long before a decision is reached. The mayor had another very good bit of information about wine. It is that if the winemaker is a nice kind man the wine will be sweeter.

A couple of days later the mayor of Marcy demonstrated the model of the Chappe semaphore which stands on the hill about his town. He told me that it was possible to send a message from Paris to Toulon, the length of France in twenty minutes.

I visit a gentleman who has built his own chateau. He proudly shows me over his pile and then he shows me how he tastes wine. After that we go to the Beaujolais museum where they have an enormous mechanical organ from the turn of the century which has one row of bottles filled to different levels with Beaujolais which are struck by hammers to make the sound of bells.