Driving: Malibu motorbikes by Hazan
2 August 2024Destinations – top ten private island boltholes (pt1)
6 August 2024Quest for the Nouveau
Since 1970, a select group of wine connoisseurs and eccentrics have been sampling the best that France has to offer via the eclectic Beaujolais Run
A s my knife slides gently through a sumptuous au point steak while bubbles fizz in the elegant, tall flute of perfectly matched Taittinger champagne, it’s clear to see the Beaujolais Run has matured well.
Four days into this unique event, our exclusive group of around 50 car fanatics, wine buffs and occasional eccentrics is seated in the very wine press where one of the world’s most famous brands of champagne is crafted by the latest members of a long and proud family line.
As we work our way through a superb six-course dinner, we reflect on a long and entertaining journey which has seen us drive the best part of 1,000 miles, from the country house retreat of the Royal Automobile Club in Epsom down to Beaujeu, in central France and, so far, half way back again.
This annual homage to Beaujolais Nouveau has its roots in a wager laid down in 1970 between Joseph Berkmann, then owner of eight London restaurants and wine columnist for The Sunday Times, and Clement Freud, director of the London Playboy Club, Member of Parliament and wine correspondent for The Sun.
Over dinner one night, the germ of an idea took shape and sometime after midnight the pair roared away from Romanèche with several cases of that year’s Beaujolais in the back of their cars, having challenged each other to be the first to get their cases home to London.
That year and the next, the race was a purely private affair between Berkmann and Freud, with Berkmann winning both times. But with the pair taking potshots at each other through their respective wine columns, word soon got around that something interesting was going on and others rushed to join in.
That private challenge, which once saw more than 100 cars taking to the roads of northern France, has now morphed into a week’s celebration of wine, cars and fabulous French highways that raises thousands of pounds for charity in the process.
In truth, the race to chase down the wine is, for many, simply a good excuse for a car event that sees some of the top classic and modern marques take to the start line each year and head off to have fun on the D-roads of France to Beaujeu and take in the classic race tracks of Dijon and Reims on the way back.
In 2011, the line-up saw a diverse selection of vehicles ranging from a 1964 Mini Cooper S to Jaguar’s latest XKR-S, with modern gems including a rare Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale, an Aston Martin DB9 and a banana yellow Corvette and the classics including three Jaguar E-Types as the Run marked the 1960s icon’s 50th anniversary.
The aim is to reach the town of Beaujeu in time for the release of the new vintage Beaujolais
It was fitting, then, that the event launched with myself and team-mate Mick Restighini in a shimmering black version of the above, taking on a lap of the test track. We were following in the lines of the man who developed the E-Type, Jaguar test driver Norman Dewis, and the 1964 Formula One world champion, John Surtees OBE, whose charity Foundation in the name of his late son, Henry, is the event’s sole beneficiary.
Then we headed to the Eurotunnel terminal, a private boarding and the first sample of champagne (for the navigators) before a long run down to Reims. Our aim was to arrive in time for a tour of the Taittinger Caves, a treasure trove of champagne where hundreds of thousands of bottles sit resting and maturing as they are readied for release.
The following day, however, sees the Run’s main event, a challenge to plot the shortest course through a selection of checkpoints in some of the region’s most picture-perfect locations.
The aim is to reach the town of Beaujeu in time for the midnight release of the new vintage Beaujolais, having taken in a fantastic wine-matched dinner in the Château de Chasselas, home to one of the region’s best Beaujolais producers, Louis Jadot, on the way. Oh, and this year, it was all done in 1960s fancy dress.
Back in the event’s original heyday, when the traditional ‘fastest time to bring back the Beaujolais’ was shattered rather unfairly by an RAF Harrier Jump Jet, the rules were changed to award victory to the vehicle that achieved the shortest route from Beaujeu to Blighty by land. In those days, despite the restrictions on speed, it was still a rather wild ride that is far removed from its current incarnation.
‘You were given a start time in the vineyards then you had to get back to catch the 8am ferry to Dover,’ says Nigel Ferrier, returning to the Run this year some 25 years after his first.
‘It was a real navigational challenge between the weather, the time and the distance, but it was still dangerous. There were times when, to save mileage, considering it was all being done at night, people would go the wrong way down one-way streets, they would go onto the motorway using the reverse way of the slip roads, and they would go along the tiniest of farm tracks, anything they could do that was actually passable to save a few miles.’
After several serious accidents, it was clear the event required a revamp and it morphed into a charity challenge, originally run by the Great Ormond Street Children’s Charity as a precursor to Children in Need, and focused on the shortest distance to Beaujeu and back.
Back then, the event kicked off with fish fingers and chips at Brands Hatch café at 10pm before heading down through France to arrive by 10am the following morning. Competitors then had a few hours’ sleep in the day, went to Beaujeu for the release, then drove back to Britain the following day. Only in recent years has it changed again, adding exclusive experiences, increasing the strength of its charitable support with a minimum target of £2,250 per vehicle, and becoming more of a journey, with scheduled time to stop and experience some of the fabulous French countryside en-route.
‘It ticks so many boxes for us,’ says Richard Slade, who competed with wife Helen for the fifth consecutive time this year and won the overall event in a Jaguar XK150.
‘There’s something different about it each year. You never quite know what’s going to happen. The first time we did it in an Aston Martin DB9, the second in a classic, which made it totally different, and we went to Paris rather than Reims. Two years ago, we were having the main dinner in a big wine press when the barn doors opened and in came Eddie Jordan driving a DBS. After dinner, he brought in his band and we had a huge party!’
The celebratory release event itself began some 60 years ago, when a decree was introduced to allow the sale of wines from the same year.
‘We still have many people around the world, particularly in the Far East, who love the tradition of this wine and the fact it has not been tamed.’
Beaujolais growers managed to arrange an earlier release than their neighbours, in mid-November, and it resulted in a festive event all across the region.
Akin to a New Year’s celebration, the release sees fireworks lighting up the skies as thousands of people stream into the town square through the narrow streets, following rolling barrels of the latest vintage. A local brass band provides music and the atmosphere builds as the new wine flows for free throughout the streets for the first hour of its release.
The reason the wine is treated with such liberality is that the chalky limestone soil in the area has traditionally encouraged quantity not quality in the growth of the Gamay grape planted in the region’s vineyards and, with a reputation of not conserving well, many took to drinking it immediately – believing it would not last.
Vinified quickly after harvest each year, Beaujolais Nouveau is now always released on the third Thursday of November and the ‘Run’ helped to make it a big thing back in the 1970s and early 1980s. Its popularity has dropped somewhat in recent years, as British people have became more refined with wine, but a pair of impressive vintages in 2009 and 2010 saw the experts start to take notice again.
‘Generally, the aromas of this wine are very expressive, forward and impressive,’ says the effervescent former cavalry officer turned master winemaker Baron Guillaume de Curières de Castelnau, of Louis Jadot wines. This year in particular produced wines with a lower acidity, giving the impression of a greater intensity. The total production is smaller than last year but of good quality. We still have many people around the world, particularly in the Far East, who love the tradition of this wine and the fact is it is a wine which is still not tamed. But we try to explain that Beaujolais is not only Beaujolais Nouveau.
‘Everyone knows Beaujolais Nouveau, but legally you have three levels of Beaujolais – the simple Beaujolais, the Villages and the Crus Beaujolais – and they are very different styles of wine, some simple, technical and clean but without emotion; others made with lots of love and passion.’
Unusually warm weather in 2011 saw a limited number of grapes, which, picked earlier than normal, resulted in a richer and deeper wine with a hint of liquorice. Indeed, the most recent vintages have been improving and, despite the tradition, a long-left Beaujolais from the higher end of the range can get better and better.
‘We produced a wine in 2009 that you could keep for 80 or 90 years, it is improving all the time,’ adds de Castelnau.
In contrast, the Beaujolais Nouveau still remains basically a fun wine. Which is precisely why, after a blast around the former F1 circuit in Dijon in a Porsche GT3RS and a run through the protected remains of the Reims F1 track that Surtees raced on many years before, we returned home, popped open a couple of bottles and raised our glasses to a special event.
Long may it continue.
beaujolaisrun.com