Beaujolais

Beaujolais is a pretty little region with many vine covered hills and is renowned for lighter style red wine derived from the gamay grape.  One thing we noticed in Beaujolais, as opposed to many of the other French regions, was that the vines do not have any trellising and are merely pruned in a bush form, providing different scenery to other regions.  We found the wine in the region very easy to drink and relatively cheap compared to other regions we had visited.  

Within Beaujolais there is a well signposted wine route, which will take you through all 12 appelations.  The capital of the region is Villefranche-sur-Saône and here you can find the Beaujolais wine centre where you can buy a card with credits to taste wines from all the appelations of Beaujolais via a vacuum sealed wine distributing device.  There is also some good information about the history and some maps that we found quite useful.  We did find the town itself a little bit difficult to navigate, but eventually made our way in and out!

We stayed in a B&B just outside Saint Lager, which was just near Mt Brouilly where, from the top, you can see Mont Blanc on a clear day.  Each of the towns along the wine route have their own unique features and all are quite pretty.  One of the must visit attractions is the UNESCO listed windmill that is the namesake for one of the appelations, Moulin à Vent (pictured above).
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