Drinking in the wine country of Beaujolais

The winemakers of Beaujolais are not happy this year.

That seems odd, considering they live in some of France's most beautiful villages, where old stone houses are decked with flowers amid hillside vineyards heavy with grapes, a half-day's drive south of Paris.

But to hear the growers tell it, the world is in a perilous state. New wines from Australia are flooding the market, even in France. The cost of labor keeps going up every fall. The European Union wants to reduce production by ripping out thousands of vines. Even the weather is causing trouble — by being too good: An unusually warm spring meant that this year's harvest began in August, throwing summer-vacation schedules into chaos.

Worst of all, the bright, fruity Beaujolais Nouveau that became a worldwide fad in the 1980s has gone the way of all things, throwing these villages' once-booming economy into a palpable slump, if not quite a bust. By French law it can't be released until the third Thursday in November (Nov. 15 this year), but there's no longer quite the same exuberance for the autumnal rite of passage.

Shaking his head as he led a walk through the vineyards, winemaker Jacques Perraud said, "The demand isn't there."

Happily for visitors, the winemakers' worries haven't made them inhospitable. Quite the contrary: They are happier than ever to see you. They want you to know that Beaujolais isn't just its Nouveau, a novelty wine that many of them were never that happy to be famous for.

No, the vintners of Beaujolais would much rather be known for their high-end work: the 10 special crus, such as Moulin-a-Vent and Morgon, the best of which can compete with the elegant wines of Burgundy to the north. The worldwide wine glut has held down prices: A bottle of perfectly nice Beaujolais can be bought at a winery for $6, a good cru for $11 and much of the best for $16.

Even better, Beaujolais may be France's prettiest wine region, worth visiting for its summer and fall landscapes even more than its wines.

Charms aplenty

Real wine enthusiasts, when they come to France, may aim for other spots on the map: Bordeaux in the southwest or Burgundy in the center. But the terrain that produces the world's most refined wines in those regions often turns out to be, well, disappointing: nothing but long rows of vines marching along gentle river valleys.

Beaujolais, on the other hand, is worth a journey and a stay. Most of its wine is merely fun, not quite distinguished. But the countryside is lovely: rugged hills and winding roads, villages with ancient stone churches, forest ridgelines touched at sunset by tendrils of fog. It's like the wilder parts of California's Napa Valley, but with church bells and chateaux.

And the food — this being arguably the "foodiest" part of France, where people talk about the provenance of not only their wines but also their chickens — is simply splendid.

A visit to Beaujolais is mostly about simple pleasures, because that's the only kind here: a countryside made for walks, bike rides or lazy drives; vest-pocket villages with flower-lined paths; hundreds of little wineries with owners who want you to taste their wares; dozens of little restaurants trying to outdo one another with local ingredients; and plenty of good inns.

This is France at its least intimidating. The wine is unpretentious, and so are the restaurants and hotels. Jeans and khakis are fine most of the time; at dinner, a casual dress or blue blazer will do. Tourists are valued here, and many people speak workable English. All are gently supportive when an American bravely tries to use his high-school French.

There's but one museum to visit, no serious art to admire, no historical monuments to speak of — just landscapes, food and wine.

Take a walking tour

The French come here mostly for the walking and biking trails, and so did we. In late spring, my wife, Paula, and I headed into the Beaujolais hills armed with little more than a rented Peugeot, a Michelin guidebook and walking shoes. At 3 o'clock one afternoon, just as the guidebook promised, a winemaker who would lead a walking tour appeared on the steps of the old stone church in the center of Vauxrenard, a village of tile-roofed houses. It was Perraud, a rangy, silver-haired man with a sun-baked face and wary eyes that made him look like a Gallic Gary Cooper, a third-generation grape grower and, that Saturday, the village's designated vineyard guide.

"You're here for the walk?" he asked, allowing a tentative smile. "Good, then. Let's go."

As we followed him on the village's well-marked, two-mile "wine path." The view, from the pine-green mountain range down across symmetrical vineyards to the broad Saone River Valley below, was sunny and glorious.

"On a clear day you can see the Alps," Perraud said brightly, the troubles of wine-selling forgotten for a moment. Soon we were inside the Perraud family winery — a small but tidy workshop with a mechanical presser, a handful of fermentation tanks and a total of four oak casks for the family's best product, its Moulin-a-Vent. (The name means "windmill," after an old mill in a vineyard; it's one of those 10 special crus.) The tasting room was spartan — a small wooden bar and a picnic table set on a pea-gravel floor — but the tasting was free, and the wine was delicious. "Not bad," Perraud allowed. The price for a bottle of his best two-year-old Moulin-a-Vent: $9.50.

Another winery was just around the bend in the road, and another after that. The family-owned wineries of Beaujolais are tiny. Twenty-five acres of vines is considered a good-sized property; 18 acres is the average. A holding that size produces enough grapes for about 38,000 bottles of wine a year, but most of the fruit is sold to Georges Duboeuf, Louis Jadot or other big winemaking houses. In the Perrauds' case, two-thirds of their grapes go to Duboeuf; of the 20,000 or so bottles they make under their label, only about 1,000 qualify as Moulin-a-Vent.

Hike, bike or walk

In the evening, a few hours later, we stood on an old terrace in Julienas, two villages to the north, and watched the sun set over the same ridge after bathing the vineyards in golden light. We sat down for dinner in the courtyard of a restaurant, Le Coq a Julienas (coq au vin, delicious cheeses, several pages of wines from the neighborhood). Later we headed to a country inn, the Auberge de la Boucle, whose sole defect was the noisy debate, early the next morning, between the innkeeper's dog and a neighbor's angry goose.

The villages here are a few miles apart, tantalizingly close on the map. But the landscape is rugged enough — all hills and canyons and switchbacks — that our initial plans to hike a neat circuit through three or four villages a day turned out to be overly ambitious.

Happily, each village came to the rescue with its own little walking map: one trail for vineyards, one for forests, one to take you by the old chapel and so on. We discovered it was easiest to choose a village, start at the main square (inevitably centered on the church) and chart a hike along one or two of the designated paths, depending on how energetic we felt and how much time we had before the next meal.

Our only problem? Getting the wine we bought home. Since liquids can't be carried in airplane hand luggage anymore, we packed three of our best finds — wines that aren't sold in the U.S. — inside our sturdiest suitcase, cushioned by shirts and sweaters. (Serious oenophiles buy foam packing forms.)

All three bottles made it home, and we've served them at dinner parties. It's hard to resist saying: "We found this outside the nicest little village in Beaujolais. Can't buy it here; they don't make enough to export. The winemaker said it was one of the best he'd ever made ... "