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Beaujolais Villages: More than Just Wine - Huire, France (Published by Most magazine)

“C’est dommage,” winemaker Jeannine Lagneau lamented. “Most people stop in Beaujolais for only a day.” Dommage, indeed, my husband and I agreed four years ago after a too-brief taste of Beaujolais warmth.

So, this summer we would return, for three weeks this time. From the Gîtes de France website, we selected five chambres d’hôtes (B&Bs) where we would stay, a few days at each, while we savoured all corners of France’s prettiest wine district. We would wander from one flower-filled golden stone village to another, dawdle at two hour long lunches over leafy salades Beaujolaises and, if luck held, form new acquaintances among some of France’s most open and unpretentious people.

But our first stop, sans doute, would be Domaine Lagneau where, in its 16th-century cave or over dinner in the stone cottage that once belonged to Jeannine’s grandparents, her husband Gérard would again pour his finest cru wine, his Régnié, into our waiting glasses.

Beaujolais, one of France’s most famous wine-producing areas, cuts a narrow swath along the Saône River between Mâcon and Lyon. It is perhaps best known for the frivolity of Beaujolais Nouveau, hastily fermented from that year’s grapes and released throughout the world on the third Thursday every November, barely two months from harvest. But what Beaujolais vintners are eager for the world to know, and are quick to tell passers-by, is about their more serious wines.

There are thousands of vignobles like Domaine Lagneau - small acreages usually passed from generation to generation, owned by a vigneron-récoltant (a winemaker who grows his own grapes), and in front of most is propped a sign, “Cave Ouverte.” Come in for a taste - and a chat about our wine. Winemaking in Beaujolais, the only region except Champagne that requires grapes to be picked by hand, is a traditional and labour-intensive affair. Like Gérard, most vintners are in their fields everyday before six, clipping and tying the vines as did their parents and grandparents before them.

How joyful it was to return to the Domaine’s rose-filled garden, to begin our days over café-au-lait and plump cherries that Jeannine picked while we polished off every last crumb of our croissants, and to resume our wine education anew. There are three classes of Beaujolais wines, she reminded us. Simple Beaujolais from the south, the more refined Beaujolais-Villages appellation farther north - in the vineyards surrounding Domaine Lagneau - and the 10 crus, wines of greater complexity and depth, each grown around and named after one of its northernmost villages.

A spiderweb of roads winds its way over and around the emerald green hills of northern Beaujolais and after breakfast every day it beckoned us to another cru village. Bustling Villié-Morgon; twin-steepled Régnié-Durette; Chiroubles, crowded with more caves than I imagined such a small place could hold; or maybe Moulin-à-Vent, little more than a 15th-century windmill among vines. On streets where exuberant blooms spilled out of gardens and threatened to overwhelm planters and baskets, every day at noon the aroma wafting from the nearest café window lured us to its terrace where we would linger over today’s plât du jour from Madame’s tiny kitchen, swirl a glass of this village’s cru and debate its caractère versus that grown just across the valley.

And at late day when shutters were pulled snug, we followed the locals inside to the pleasures of a Beaujolais evening - à table. Perhaps to a restaurant like Chez Papa in Cercié where its proprietor scooted from table to table, full bowls in hand, urging his patrons to sample yet another example of traditional Lyonnaise cuisine. On many evenings, it was the hospitality and food at our chambres d’hôtes that we craved. Upon request, the hosts of many Beaujolais B&Bs prepare a multi-course evening meal for their guests. At a few, like La Ferme Berger in Les Ardillats, a collection of old stone farm buildings restored into a comfortable five-bedroom inn, this is a daily event. “It’s like eating at your friends’ home,” said owner Marie-Thérèse Bonnot.

She’s right. Every night, Marie-Thérèse and her husband, Alain, pour aperitifs for a changing cast of Riviera-bound Parisians, Belgians and Dutch gathered in their stable-turned-dining-room. Over Beaujolais-Villages that flows as freely as the burbling spring in the Ferme’s courtyard, conviviality reigns and conversations flit from Belgian language politics to rhapsodies over dinner’s every ingredient, invariably from the Bonnot garden or the outdoor bake oven that Alain fires up weekly.

And as at any Beaujolais table, talk always turns to the vendanges, when the golden fields of September fill with basket-laden workers from near and abroad and the backbreaking work of gathering the vineyard’s sweet bounty begins. Vintner Jean-Luc Canard had earlier told us that only when the harvest is finished can it be determined how well-balanced are these grapes, how exceptionel this vintage.

“Would you like to come into my cave?” he’d asked, just in from his vines at Domaine de Monsepeys outside of Eméringes.

An invitation into the damp coolness of a vaulted cave, into the heart of the winery - and of its vintner - though freely given, was a privilege we’d come to treasure. For Beaujolais vintners, the making of wine is more, much more, than what they do. It’s the essence of who they are: the very soul of Jeannine and Gérard Lagneau, 7th and 5th-generation winemakers on their Villages and Régnié properties and their son, Didier, who before the age of 30 had already won medals for his Côte-de-Brouilly cru.

And it’s the soul of Jean-Luc Canard who cradled a bottle of his Fleurie, his sturdy hands still smudged with soil from the field. At moments like this, we agreed, the distance from the vine to our glass will never be shorter.