Bye-bye Beaujolais

Here is my parting shot: the village of Juliénas, one of the northern-most towns in the Beaujolais Villages appellation. We stopped at a wine co-op that we learned about on the internet and came away with about eighteen bottles. Yum!

The village of Juliénas seen from the wine cooperative just south of town.

After the co-op, we drove up into the village and found a nice café overlooking the vineyards. The sun was shining and Tasha sat with us while we enjoyed a coffee. It was the second café she got to visit on our little trip. The very thoughtful waiter brought over a bowl of water for her. After our coffee, we got back in the car and headed out for the ninety-minute drive back to our rental house.

Quixotic

Here are just a few more images of the moulin à vent (windmill) of Beaujolais fame. To enter the windmill in winter is the impossible dream.

During the summer months, the windmill is open to visitors. I wonder if it ever operates?

A door at ground level with a note to tourists.

Two of these curved stairs climb up to a second door above the first.

And finally, a long shot of the whole building.

Details

This is a view roughly toward the west from the foot of the moulin à vent (windmill) in the vineyards of Beaujolais. You can see that I artfully (!) captured the end of one of the windmill's sails in the photo. Otherwise, the photo is without much interest.

What is that on top of the roof?

That is, until you look very closely at the tip of the roof on the house in the center of the image. I enlarged it below to show you what I mean. The little weather vane on the point of the roof is a miniature of the windmill itself. On top of that, the wind vane looks like a hunter aiming his gun at something, perhaps a deer.

It's a weather vane in the shape of the neighboring windmill!

I'm nearly done with my photos from this little four-day trip. On the home front, a sneaky leak recently developed in the cold water supply pipe under the kitchen sink. The leaking water was running down the pipe inside a wall and shorted out an electrical outlet on the floor below which immediately tripped the master breaker, cutting off our electricity the other night. Before knowing about the leak, I isolated the breaker that was the problem (there's only one outlet on that circuit) and was able to restore power to the rest of the house. Ken later figured out that the outlet might have shorted out because of water (it's been raining a lot) and indeed it had -- the wall above the outlet was damp and the floor under the outlet was wet. But it wasn't rain. We traced the dampness back to the  kitchen sink upstairs and discovered the leak. The plumber came over on Tuesday and fixed the pipe. Now we're letting the outlet dry out for a few days before plugging anything back into it.

Le moulin à vent

That's French for "windmill." This one stands on a hilltop overlooking the vineyards of Beaujolais and gives its name to one of the special crus of Beaujolais. We stopped here and walked Tasha up the short walkway to the foot of the windmill and took in the views.

Le moulin à vent.

Unfortunately, we were too early for the cave to be open -- they were still closed for lunch. But it's probably for the best. We already had some wine in the trunk and we had several more villages to visit on our way north. Beaujolais is more expensive than our local Touraine gamay so we didn't need to go overboard. By the way, un caveau is une petite cave (a little wine cellar). Clear? Not.

The wine cooperative at the foot of the windmill, closed for lunch.

But it was nice to see the windmill. I had always assumed that Moulin-à-vent was a town, but it's not. It's just the windmill, which is classified as a historical monument, and the name of the wine made in the neighboring vineyards.

Nearby buildings and surrounding vineyards.

A grammar note: when moulin à vent is written without hyphens, it refers to a windmill, any windmill. When the three words are hyphenated, Moulin-à-vent, it's a proper noun that refers to the wine appellation. At least that's my understanding.

Tasha Tuesday

Our first stop in Beaujolais was the town of Régnié-Durette. We didn't find a roadside picnic spot between Beaujeu and Régnié, so we decided to go to a wine cave in town before things closed for lunch. Ken went in and tasted while Tasha and I explored the town's main square. We walked around the church to see the view and found a single picnic table just beyond the apse.

Tasha contemplates the view out over the vineyards of Beaujolais.

We made our way back to meet Ken as he was coming out of his tasting with six bottles of Régnié Beaujolais. We put that in the trunk, retrieved our little cooler and picnic supplies, and made our way back to the picnic table for lunch. I attached Tasha's leash to the table.

We had our picnic in the shadow of Régnié's church, Saint-Jean-Apôtre, built in 1867.

Ken had made turkey salad sandwiches that we enjoyed with some tortilla chips and a bottle of the local wine. The sun was out and we the view was great, but there was a brisk chilly wind and it wasn't comfortable to sit for too long. Still, our mission was accomplished and we got back to the car and planned where to go next.

I'll bet that this door leads to the crypt below the main floor of the church.

The map showed a route that made its way north through several of the Beaujolais villages, so we headed in that direction.

Beaujolais

During our little trip, we were based in the Bourbonnais region. It has a relatively small local wine industry centered on the town of Saint-Pourçain. But a little further to the east, over a small range of mountains, lies Beaujolais, a much larger wine appellation in the Saône Valley that's just south of the Burgundy region and just north of the city of Lyon.

This is the view from our picnic spot with the mountains at our backs and the Saône River Valley out to our east. The high mountains on the horizon are part of the Alps. Beyond them are Switzerland and Italy.

It took us a just under two hours to drive from our rental house near Moulins. We encountered some road construction along the way that slowed us down a little. We also stopped at a supermarket to be sure we had a bottle of wine for our picnic lunch, and we made a pit stop for Tasha. Then we crossed the mountains on little roads. Curves, sheer drops, narrow roads. I was relieved when we got to the other side.

The brown of winter vineyards on the slopes of Beaujolais.

As we left the heights, we drove through the town of Beaujeu, for which the region is named. The town sits in a canyon, so it's long and narrow, only a few streets wide, and very nice looking. But we didn't stop in town because we were looking for a place to have our picnic lunch, and we thought that we might find a roadside spot between towns.