A Beaujolais weekend

Sure, I drink lots of wine in France. That goes without saying—it’s hard to go a day without having a glass when most restaurants serve it with lunch and dinner. It seems almost king of silly to me, at this point, to think that it might be strange to order a glass of wine with lunch back in the states. It will be a hard habit to kick.

However, that being said, the past few weekends have been wine crazy. Allow me to explain. Almost every weekend here in Lyon, there is some crazy event going on. For the past couple weeks, there have been celebrations of the new Beaujolais harvest. Beaujolais, as you might have guessed, is a region in France that is right above Lyon. The wine, by all accounts, is horrible. It’s often sweet, yet dry. The consistency is nothing to write home about… it’s not my cup of tea. That being said, the French hate Beaujolais. But there is one redeeming quality of the wine: it’s cheap. Yes, it’s remarkably cheap and that means it will be popular amongst at least one group of people: the capricious youth.

So, pretty much every university and international organization has had some sort of Beaujolais release party in the past two weeks. I’ve been to three now—but probably the best Beaujolais stories were created this weekend.

Friday night, I got dragged to what I suspected was going to be an awkward wine and cheese party by one of my Japanese friends. However, for a 6 euro ticket, one could drink as much wine as they could handle and eat plenty of cheese. Additionally, there was a Rockabilly group that performed live. It was quite funny because they were French and their lead singer was doing his damnedest to pronounce the “H” in “Hey, everybody.” Needless to say, there is not enough wine in the Beaujolais region to make this evening not awkward, so we did our best.

What started out as an evening debating over cinematic genius (the source of the argument was over Fellini and Goddard), turned into a wild dance party. After a few glasses of wine, we were up there singing “around the clock tonight” and plenty of old Johnny Cash tunes. It was clear that to the rest of the crowd that we were Americans and we appreciated people trying hard to recreate our music history.

I left that night quite satisfied with my dose of Americanism. I went to Salsa with Amy. We sat and talked a bit, danced a few rounds and headed home. We had a long day to follow.

Saturday, I met up with nearly everyone in the Oregon group to go on a trip to the Beaujolais region itself to check out some vineyards and talk with some horticulturists. They taught us how to examine wine (if you would like to recreate this scenario, I would suggest watching sideways in French), and fed us some specialties of the region—including the most magnificent fresh bread. They all sent us home with a loaf, too.

The farm area was gorgeous. It was a dark and cloudy day, and in the valleys, the vines were clouded in a thick fog. I desperately wanted to play hide and go seek—but many of my American companions deemed this too elementary of an idea. So, in lieu of running around a vineyard, I enjoyed the subtle pleasure of pressing the warm soft bread against my face. It smelled like an unsalted pretzel. It was wonderful!

Finally, we returned back to Lyon in the early evening. A bunch of us met up in my friend’s apartment to watch some American Television and enjoy some Ile Flotante (a special French dessert that I discovered a few weeks ago).

The weekend was nice and slow-paced compared to the past few weekends. I’ve managed to get home at a decent hour every night! The rest of the week has been nice, too. I started watching La Maison Blanche (The West Wing). I believe it’s the fifth season I’m watching. It doesn’t interest me too much, but it reminds me of a good friend back in St. Louis. I think she’ll be happy to know I’m watching it.

Things are remarkably wonderful in France. Everything is Christmas-lit right now, in preparation for a grand celebration next week. There is a large festival of lights that goes all night long next week and the entire city stays out to look at the animation projected on large walls, etc. The metros have replaced their lights with pink and blue bulbs to prepare for it. Christmas is in the air and I’m getting excited to see my family.

I hear my host mom calling for lunch, so I must leave you here my friends. I miss all of you during this season, but I wish you good luck near finals and lots of relaxation with your loved ones. Ciao!