A couple weeks ago, I participated in a cultural event here in Lyon that might be worth your attention.
It was called Beaujolais Nouveau. This is a regional festival dedicated to the first wines of the season, made from the youngest grapes. It’s fairly recent, as French festivals go — it’s only been around since the 1800s — but the vineyards were first planted by the Romans. These young wines only ferment for a few weeks before being sold, making them unique in two ways: they taste pretty bad, and they sell for incredibly cheap.
The idea is to celebrate the beginning of the bottling and fermenting season by tasting wine that hasn’t really had a chance to mature. The reality of the situation is that folks wanted to get drunk. I went with an American friend who, despite having lived here for a year already, had never been to this festival.
We each paid fifteen euros to enter a big white tent which reminded me a lot of the Storytelling Festival. Along the walls were tables laden with bottles and cups; each table represented a local vineyard. We were meant to walk the perimeter, tasting each of the wines, and at the end receive a free bottle of whichever was our favorite.
Plates of sliced meats and cheeses were passed around by workers and enthusiastic attendees. And people were enthusiastic; there was no system for telling if someone had already got a cup from a certain table, so plenty of folks were getting loaded on dozens of glasses of wine.
My friend and I called it quits after three cups. Neither of us wanted to get tipsy that night. We each got our bottle of Beaujolais wine, right from the hands of the master distiller working the table. We walked the city for a bit after that, admiring just how loud and obnoxious even the French can be with enough alcohol.
Aside from the covered tent, the festival spilled out all over the old city. Groups of people, young and old, sat on stoops and bars, laughing and sharing bottles and cups. Things were very relaxed and jovial, and unlike a rowdy evening on the Strip in Knoxville, this event felt safe and cozy. A little loud, a little boisterous, but a far cry from a frat party.
This experience emphasized to me the vast difference in alcohol culture in the United State and France. Here in France, alcohol is first and foremost thought of as wine; anything that isn’t wine (or beer) is considered “the strong stuff.” Wine is had at every dinner by almost every person, and people typically have their first cup in their early teens around the family dinner table. I would say that this is very much not the case in most of America.
I have no particular conclusions to draw about these differences; they simply exist and I present them to you to contemplate. All I know for sure is that Beaujolais wine is cheap and a little gross.
Cordialement,
Allison
P.S.: Check out this guy I found stuck in a wall.
Flan in France 