Beaujolais Nouveau

You might have to click on that image if you want to see the print, but I'll recap: "Cold and humid - probable melted snow." In my book, "melted snow" is rain. I frequently get a kick out of the phrasing they use on the site I look at for my Metz weather reports. It's like someone's snarky, sarcastic humor gets the better of them while writing reports that are easily summed up by my students: "Today is cold, cloudy, windy and rainy." From now until April.

Today at school we fêted the Beaujolais Nouveau, a wine that comes around at this time of year, since it's meant to be consumed immediately upon reaching its "ready" point in fermentation. We celebrated with various charcuteries, cured sausages, farm bread, cheese, and of course this year's Beaujolais. There is always great discussion as to whether this year's Beaujolais is better than last year's, though most of the teachers backed out of the decision, declaring Beaujolais in general, "not really their thing." Someone quipped, "it's not really anyone's thing!" to which there was no disagreement. As Wikipedia will back me up, Beaujolais tends to be regarded as a kind of lame wine. Basic. Not very complicated. Certainly nothing to wax poetic about as Frenchies will do about other kinds of wine.

Though the lameness of the wine doesn't stop anyone from fête-ing it at the end of November. Technically the Beaujolais came out last Thursday, which means that most people had at least one soirée Beaujolais at the end of the week, and another during the weekend. By the time today rolled around, most were more interested in the charcuterie and the cheese than the wine.

As we moved on to dessert and coffee, discussion turned to the next important school decision: would we be fête-ing Noël with another lunch-time feast? The teacher who had arranged today's meal declared, "I'll bring the wine!" and the decision was made.