WINE SCHOOL
Beaujolais, Freed From Clichés
It’s a wine trapped too often by clichés, confined by expectations, held back by a checkered past that leaves many hesitant to embrace all that the best bottles have to offer.
PARIS — One of the nicest red wines France has to offer is Beaujolais, famed for its fresh, fruity flavor. And the chance of getting a genuine bottle — even in Paris — is less than one in five. The French weekly newspaper Candide today [May 17] told of the high odds in an exposé entitled ‘‘The Beaujolais Scandal.’’ It cited the estimate of one expert that, while only 18.5 million gallons of true Beaujolais are produced each year, five times as much is sold under the Beaujolais label in the Paris region alone. Few Frenchmen would challenge the estimate.
Most wine drinkers here accept the racketeering in Beaujolais as part of the French way of life, like not reporting all one’s earnings on the tax return. The persistence of the Beaujolais fraud is remarkable, given the strict regulations governing the wine trade and the efforts of authorities to maintain France’s reputation in the field. Beaujolais is produced in a ten-by-30-mile region in the vicinity of Lyons. Even though the fraud is well known, many Frenchmen gamely order Beaujolais in a bar. ‘‘Sometimes the chemistry done is of a high order,’’ one habitué explained, ‘‘and the taste of Beaujolais still comes through.’’ — New York Herald Tribune, European edition, May 18, 1965