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I'll Drink to That: Beaujolais and the French Peasant Who Made It the World's Most Popular Wine
The remarkable saga of the wine and people of Beaujolais and Georges Duboeuf, the peasant lad who brought both world recognition.
Every third week of November, wine shops around the world announce “Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé” and in a few short weeks, over seven million bottles are sold and drunk. Although often scorned by the wine world’s snob set, the annual delivery of each year’s new Beaujolais wine brings a welcome ray of sunshine to a morose November from New York to Tokyo. The surprising Cinderella tale behind the success of Beaujolais Nouveau captures not just the story of a wine but also the history of a fascinating region. At the heart of this fairy tale is the peasant wine grower named Georges Duboeuf, whose rise as the undisputed king of Beaujolais reads like a combination of suspenseful biography and luscious armchair travel.
I’ll Drink to That transports us to the unique corner of France where medieval history still echoes and where the smallholder peasants who made Beaujolais wines on their farms battled against the contempt of the entrenched Burgundy and Bordeaux establishment. With two bottles of wine in his bike’s saddlebag, young Duboeuf set out to revolutionize the stodgy wine business, becoming the richest and most famous individual wine dealer in France. But this is more than one man’s success story. As The Perfectionist used Bernard Loiseau to tell the layered history of French haute cuisine, here Chelminski uses Duboeuf’s story to paint the portrait of the often endearing, sometimes maddening but always interesting inhabitants of a little-known corner of France, offering at the same time a witty, panoramic view of the history of French winemaking.
Every third week of November, wine shops around the world announce “Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé” and in a few short weeks, over seven million bottles are sold and drunk. Although often scorned by the wine world’s snob set, the annual delivery of each year’s new Beaujolais wine brings a welcome ray of sunshine to a morose November from New York to Tokyo. The surprising Cinderella tale behind the success of Beaujolais Nouveau captures not just the story of a wine but also the history of a fascinating region. At the heart of this fairy tale is the peasant wine grower named Georges Duboeuf, whose rise as the undisputed king of Beaujolais reads like a combination of suspenseful biography and luscious armchair travel.
I’ll Drink to That transports us to the unique corner of France where medieval history still echoes and where the smallholder peasants who made Beaujolais wines on their farms battled against the contempt of the entrenched Burgundy and Bordeaux establishment. With two bottles of wine in his bike’s saddlebag, young Duboeuf set out to revolutionize the stodgy wine business, becoming the richest and most famous individual wine dealer in France. But this is more than one man’s success story. As The Perfectionist used Bernard Loiseau to tell the layered history of French haute cuisine, here Chelminski uses Duboeuf’s story to paint the portrait of the often endearing, sometimes maddening but always interesting inhabitants of a little-known corner of France, offering at the same time a witty, panoramic view of the history of French winemaking.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published October 18, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 21, 2009
As an extremely novice wine drinker, I was strangely drawn into this wonderfully written book that chronicles the wine-making tradition of the Beaujolais region of France. I was lucky enough to experience the Beaujolais Nouveau craze during my time in France and loved reading the "story behind the wine."
Excellent writing and a compelling story, you will be cheering for the underdogs and wanting to seek out one of the crus of Beaujolais as you wait for the third week of November to roll around.
Excellent writing and a compelling story, you will be cheering for the underdogs and wanting to seek out one of the crus of Beaujolais as you wait for the third week of November to roll around.
February 23, 2011
Since Beaujolais is one of my favorite wines, a very good read (for me) on the history and current issues in the region. The first half is history back to the middle ages - could have done with a bit less detail here. The second half is the rise of Georges Duboeuf as the megamerchchant of Beaujolais and especially Beaujolais Nouveau. Again, could be a shorter section, but it never completely bogs down.
May 21, 2012
I adored this book, and I appreciate the detail and all the side stories. The reader wouldn't have truly 'got' Georges Deboeuf otherwise. I will encourage my wine loving husband to also read it, and maybe plan a trip to the region together (perhaps even stay at Marcel Pariaud's B&B while we are there.....) I would definitely fully appreciate it after reading this book.
August 26, 2008
This book would have done much better edited down into a New Yorker article. There are very interesting bits within the book, but you have to slog through an awful lot of extraneous chapters and side stories to get to the most interesting thread, which is about Georges Duboeuf's career.
March 11, 2014
The first half is an engaging (if somewhat disorganized) history of Beaujolais winemaking. The second half is a love note to Georges Duboeuf, and it starts to drag. Still, if, like me, you know almost nothing about the subjects, this book is a pleasant way to learn.
October 12, 2008
I enjoyed this book about Georges Duboeuf and the Beaujolais wine country so much that I am drinking a glass of Macon White tonight.
The writing is excellent; you won't be bored with this book.
The writing is excellent; you won't be bored with this book.
March 24, 2012
My love of the wine and interest in rural France just couldn't keep me going through the ponderous, self-important prose. Alas!
February 26, 2008
Interesting and entertaining look at the history of Beaujolais wine.
July 13, 2017
From Publishers Weekly
Francophile Chelminski (_The Perfectionist_) offers up a feisty defense of Georges Duboeuf, who singlehandedly put Beaujolais, the grape and the region, on the culinary map. Unlike the better established regions of Burgundy and Bordeaux, the small grape growers of Beaujolais—a ribbon of land between Lyon and Mâcon, its capital Beaujeu—held to the growing of the inferior gamay, which flourished in the region despite the attempts by the Romans to eradicate it. Surviving phylloxera and grafting from plants of American roots, the humble Beaujolais became a favorite wine of Lyon largely because of the excellence of its primeur, or new wine, which was available by St. Martin's Day, November 11. In Chelminski's circuitous path, enter young Duboeuf, on his family winery at Chaintre, who decided by 1951 to circumvent the big dealers and set up his own wine-tasting cellar. Armed with two of his own bottles, he pedaled over to Paul Blanc's famous restaurant Le Chapon Fin down the road, and history was made: Duboeuf Wines is the #1 exporter of French wines to the U.S. Chelminski offers a stylish history of French wine-making, and an unblushing tribute to Duboeuf's achievements. (Oct.)
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In the highly snobbish wine universe, Beaujolais lacks the cachet of many of its brother wines from France's Burgundy region. Product of a single grape, gamay, this is a wine best enjoyed in its youth, so Beaujolais finds itself too often dismissed as common. Yet no other wine attracts the exuberant anticipatory attention that accompanies the release of a new vintage every November. In detailed and good-humored prose, Chelminski traces the history of Beaujolais from the phylloxera devastation of French vineyards in the late nineteenth century through the food revolution inaugurated in part by neighboring Lyon's restaurateur Paul Bocuse a century later. Crediting Beaujolais' success to an enterprising French winemaker, Georges Duboeuf, Chelminski's narrative uncovers how Duboeuf's public-relations coup in promoting the release of the new vintage has paradoxically cheapened Beaujolais in the minds of some oenophiles. Wine-book collections will find this volume fills a notable gap. Knoblauch, Mark
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews