The three parts of Beaujolais

When we left Régnié-Durette after our picnic lunch, our plan was to drive north through the prime Beaujolais « cru » vineyards before driving back to the Bourbonnais late in the afternoon. « Cru » is one of those French terms like « terroir » — it's pretty hard to translate. Let's just say "local vintages." Anyway, Beaujolais is actually divided into three distinct wine areas, or « terroirs ». In the south, closer to Lyon, the soil is clay and limestone (as it is around Saint-Aignan), and the wines produced are just labeled as Beaujolais. Paradoxically, the south in south Beaujolais is "colder" — slower to warm up in the sun — than the soil in north Beaujolais.

The middle part of Beaujolais is where the soil transitions from being clay and limestone into a layer of sand and schist over a granite base. The wine towns there label their production as Beaujolais-Villages. Most are made with a mix of grapes from different vineyard parcels and villages, but still they are considered a step up in quality from the plain Beaujolais wines made to their south. They don't carry a more specific appellation than just Beaujolais-Villages, however.

Finally, the northern part of Beaujolais is an area where topography, soil type, and weather conditions produce the wines that are considered to be the best that Beaujolais has to offer. It's a much hillier area, so not only are the granitic soils lighter than the clay of the south, but the vineyard parcels are better exposed to warm sunshine because they are often on east- or south-facing slopes. The soil warms up more quickly and the grapes ripen more completely, making for richer, tastier wines.

We had done just a little bit of research to see where we might find good places to buy some bottles of Beaujolais to bring back to Saint-Aignan. We tend to favor wine cooperatives rather than individual producers in situations like these, when we don't have a lot of time. Individual producers are often very busy people, and many require you to make an appointment rather than just show up unannounced to taste and perhaps buy bottles of their wines.

Co-ops are places of business with regular hours. You can just drop in, with the assurance that somebody will be there to advise you and sell you the wines you want. You can taste too, but we weren't tasting because we were driving. We drove north through the vineyards and through villages we've long heard of — Villié-Morgon, Chiroubles, Fleurie, Chénas, Moulin-à-Vent, and Juliénas, for example. Those are the Beaujolais villages that are authorized to put their name on their wine labels, because each village produces a vintage that is distinctive compared to all the other varieties of Beaujolais, and has its own special characteristics and reputation.

A day outdoors in the Beaujolais vineyards

One of the points of going on the trip to the Bourbonnais, with a day trip to Beaujolais, was to get Tasha the Sheltie puppy used to traveling around in the car and spending nights in new, unfamiliar surroundings. Another was just for us: it was a break from the low-grade cabin fever we'd been suffering from. We'd had a very rainy and dismal winter, I then had to make a emergency trip to the U.S. because my mother was dying. Also, Walt and I both had very bad colds that lasted for more than a month.

Going to see the Beaujolais region, which we'd somehow never visited before, turned out to be a great way to spend one of the very few sunny and mild days of this hiver horrible. I was glad to be outside all day. I wanted to see new sights and enjoy driving around in the Citroën. I wanted the feeling of freedom that had been missing from life for a few months, and I needed to breathe fresh air.

Beaujolais was not at all what I personally expected it to be. I imagined it green and hilly; it turned out to be more brown and almost mountainous. It wasn't better or worse, but just different from what I had imagined. The vineyards cover fairly steep east-facing hillsides running down to the Saône River, and off in the distance you can see the snow-covered Alps. That surprised me.

Régnié-Durette, where we picnicked at noon and I took these photos, is at about 300 meters of elevation — a thousand feet — if I'm reading the map correctly. There was a festive atmosphere in the middle of the village (pop. 1,000), which was neat and clean. A little carnival with bumper cars and other attractions was set up on the square in front of the church.

People working the carnival were preparing their mid-day meal and getting ready to sit out on the little front porches of their trailers to eat and drink. There was a clothesline behind the church, just a few meters from our picnic table, and people were drying their laundry. A young woman came to take some dry clothes in and wished us a cheerful Bon appétit ! as we ate our sandwiches and enjoyed a glass of the Régnié red wine.

Driving from the Bourbonnais to the Beaujolais

It took about 2½ hours to drive from Moulins (red symbol on map) in the Bourbonnais over to the Beaujolais wine-production area to the east. For the first 50 miles of the trip, we were on a mostly two-lane road that was clogged with big trucks, so it was pretty slow. There were very few passing lanes.

En plus, there was a traffic jam because of road construction going on around the town of Charolles, where the famous Charolais cattle are raised. There we turned south and drove about 40 miles on narrow, winding roads through hilly, rural countryside. I didn't take any photos until we stopped for lunch.

We arrived in Beaujeu, the historic capital of Beaujolais that gave the historic province its name, at about noon. Our first planned stop was in the nearby Régnié-Durette, which is one of the 10 premium wine villages (les crus) in Beaujolais. The vineyards of Beaujolais cover about 400 mi² of territory (35 miles north-to-south, 12 miles east-to-west), just about an hour north of the major city of Lyon by car.

We had taken a picnic lunch with us, and at Régnié we found a table on the grounds of the church, overlooking the vineyards, which we were interested to compare to the Touraine vineyards that surround our house and hamlet near Saint-Aignan. It was a sunny day but with a chilly breeze. I bought six bottles of 2015 and 2016 cru Régnié wine for 60 euros to take home with us.

Remember Saint-Aignan?

Crossing the bridge over the Cher River as we drove back into Saint-Aignan on March 9...

We had left the gîte where we stayed for four nights over in the Bourbonnais/Allier area and decided to drive on the autoroute, speed limit 80 m.p.h., to get home as early as we could. We arrived before noon.

I still have a day's worth of pictures that I took in the Beaujolais wine region on March 8. We went there just to see what it looked like, never having seen it before, and to buy some wine of course. I'll be getting to those photos over the next few days.