The annual Beaujolais contest, the showcase for more than 1,000 French winegrowers, has been canceled after producers of the region’s most prestigious wines decided to break away from the organization which also promotes the mass-market Beaujolais Nouveau.
“It’s the first time in the history of Beaujolais that anything like this has happened,” Union Viticole du Beaujolais (UVB) secretary-general Denis Chilliet said. The union has represented all Beaujolais winegrowers for the past 60 years.
He said that following Tuesday’s decision to split by producers of the 10 Beaujolais Cru wines, he ordered the cancelation of the Concours des Grands Vins du Beaujolais in case tempers boiled over at the end of the wine-tasting and awarding of medals. The contest had been scheduled for Jan. 9.
The row risks being portrayed as a kind of class warfare, pitting the best wines grown on the northern slopes of the Beaujolais region in Burgundy against the southern vineyards where the cheaper Beaujolais Villages and Beaujolais Nouveau are produced.
“Class warfare? More like a war caused by spoiled children,” Chilliet said.
The Beaujolais Cru winemakers, who produce brands such as Fleurie and Brouilly, have accused the union of “dragging down” the best wines and failing to promote them sufficiently, which Chilliet denies. The decision by Beaujolais Crus representative Audrey Charton took the union by surprise.
“We worked side by side for months, with no animosity, and then this came like a bolt from the blue,” Chilliet told reporters. “Apparently they think that if they do everything themselves they’d be better off.”
Charton was not available for comment on Thursday. A family member said that she was “trying to cool things down.”
The union and the breakaway group have agreed a three-month truce which is set to give them time to see how to proceed and to examine the financial implications. The Beaujolais Crus producers intend to set up a new group and said that the union is outdated with “goals, concerns, expectations and organizations which are increasingly different among the two families.”
Some winegrowers suspect that the Beaujolais Crus producers might eventually hook up with the Burgundy wine trade.
However, Chilliet said: “Isn’t it better to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than a small one at the bottom of a big pond?”
He said he hopes for a solution with the breakaway winegrowers in the coming weeks, “but after all that’s happened, it will be difficult to pull back from the brink.”
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