Beaujolais Days

Some of my fondest, freshest memories over the years are what I call my “Beaujolais Days.”

I was fresh from college and was running Friends of Wine magazine, when my first business trip in the wine world took me to Beaujolais, where I spent several days with the DuBoeuf family in Romaneche-Thorins, France.

This was wine as I had always wanted it to be -- earthy, exuberant, fruity and, most importantly, linked to family.

I spent every spare moment with Fabienne and Franck DuBoeuf, who were about my age -- comparing notes on work and life, cooking, talking, running through fields and vineyards with assorted dogs, looking at stars. But there were not that many spare moments.

By 7:30 am, when Georges claimed that our palates were at their most awake and astute, we would taste our way through Beaujolais -- visiting small family growers in the evocatively named villages of Saint-Amour, Juliènas, Chenas, Moulin-à-Vent, Fleurie, Chiroubles, Morgon, Régnié, Brouilly, and Côte de Brouilly. By midnight, we would wind down from delicious dinners with the likes of Paul Bocuse and others.

Of course, it was incumbent upon us to spit if we were to make it to breakfast okay. And Georges remains my best spitting mentor to this day.

And while intervening years in serial start-ups took me temporarily away from the wine world, Beaujolais was always close to my heart. I never failed to celebrate the fruity, young “nouveau” release on the third Thursday of November, or to line up and taste the “cru villages” when they are released each Spring...always feeling, as I taste, as if I am back in the vineyards, with all those families built in.

And so it was with pleasure beyond words that I attended the year’s Nouveau Beaujolais event at InTent Bar and Restaurant in NYC, connecting not only with Franck DuBoeuf, but also with the Deutsch family, which has been importing Les Vins Georges DuBoeuf since 1981, when my love of the wine, place and family first began.

This year’s 2006 Nouveau is crisp, fruity, quaffable -- a simple pleasure that makes not only for happy drinking, but that for me, enlivens favorite memories and enhances the making of new ones. Bring it on!