Complex Numbers

Beaujolais

The weather decided to give me a break, just in time for another wine tour out in the countryside.

Yesterday's excursion took me into the nearby wine region of Beaujolais, source of one of my personal traditions.

I've talked about it enough in here before, but, in brief: Beaujolais Nouveau is released on the third Thursday of November, just in time to ship it to the US for drinking with Thanksgiving meals, which it accompanies very well. I try to get a bottle every year.

This is not, of course, the only wine produced in the region, and their more traditional offerings are very good.

But the funny thing I found out on this trip is: the French consider it a trash wine. Which probably explains why the US gets so many bottles in November; they unload their stock on us so they don't have to drink it themselves. Every year when it's released on Beaujolais Nouveau Day,   though, they get together and party to drink the stuff and complain about how bad it is. And probably to laugh at the Americans who they can pass it off onto, but for some reason none of the tour guides I talked to would admit to that.

Thing about it, though, is the wine may be crap, but it's cheap crap, and to me, the price of the stuff figures into the taste. So yeah... I like it. Deal with it, France, because I have to deal with beer drinkers claiming to love Bud Light.

In other news, today is my last full day in France, but I'll talk more about today's events tomorrow, which is when I'm scheduled to get on a train to Belgium. I'm of the considered opinion that no trip to France is complete without at least one decadent, elegant, crazy expensive formal dinner. So I had mine last night, in the restaurant on the top floor of my hotel.

The only thing more boring than hearing about someone go on about their dream last night is hearing them talk about their decadent and crazy expensive French dinner, so I'll spare you most of the details, only to say it was everything I expected and not nearly as expensive as I thought it would be (and that neither snails nor frogs were involved). I accompanied it with a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé, which is not from this region, but what the hell, I like it and it was on the menu.

When I say bottle, I mean bottle. Damn right I polished it off.

Today's vacation photo was from an overlook where we stopped on the tour for a glass of wine. You will note that it's not raining, and that the view was incredible.