Books about Beaujolais from Amazon.com

The remarkable saga of the wine and people of Beaujolais and Georges Duboeuf, the peasant lad who brought both world recognition

Every third week of November, wine shops around the world announce “Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé” and in a few short weeks, over seven million bottles are sold and drunk. Although often scorned by the wine world’s snob set, the annual delivery of each year’s new Beaujolais wine brings a welcome ray of sunshine to a morose November from New York to Tokyo. The surprising Cinderella tale behind the success of Beaujolais Nouveau captures not just the story of a wine but also the history of a fascinating region. At the heart of this fairy tale is the peasant wine grower named Georges Duboeuf, whose rise as the undisputed king of Beaujolais reads like a combination of suspenseful biography and luscious armchair travel.

I’ll Drink to That transports us to the unique corner of France where medieval history still echoes and where the smallholder peasants who made Beaujolais wines on their farms battled against the contempt of the entrenched Burgundy and Bordeaux establishment. With two bottles of wine in his bike’s saddlebag, young Duboeuf set out to revolutionize the stodgy wine business, becoming the richest and most famous individual wine dealer in France. But this is more than one man’s success story. As The Perfectionist used Bernard Loiseau to tell the layered history of French haute cuisine, here Chelminski uses Duboeuf’s story to paint the portrait of the often endearing, sometimes maddening but always interesting inhabitants of a little-known corner of France, offering at the same time a witty, panoramic view of the history of French winemaking..
Price: $2.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Chef Christopher Kump's cooking ranges from mashed-potatoes homey to black-truffle haute. Thanks to Evening Food, you can enjoy both sides of the intensely flavorful dishes he serves without trekking to Cafe Beaujolais in Mendocino, California, where he works his magic. For a cozy dinner menu, serve Roasted Eggplant Tapenade Tart, followed by Roast Chicken with creamy Fish Ginger Sauce accompanied by Chive Mashed Potatoes, then finish with the nut-topped Pear and Apple Crisp. For a feast with luxe, Kump might recommend Sautéed Duck Foie Gras with Garlic Confit Purée, Oven-steamed Salmon Filet with Fresh Herb Sabayon Sauce (whose lemongrass seasoning gives new life to a classic), and his surprising Lemon-Chocolate Mousse for dessert.

In addition to the collection of mouthwatering recipes, Kump and Margaret Fox, Kump's wife and owner of Cafe Beaujolais, chat about their life, share anecdotes about the dishes, and provide information about ingredients and cooking techniques, such as how to remove pesky pin bones from a salmon filet using tweezers. Black-and-white photos illustrate the attraction of this little restaurant with world-class food, located in a remote, New-England-on-the-Pacific town. --Dana Jacobi.
Price: $10.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]