In Beaune, They'll Drink to That

Burgundy Town Celebrates the Grape With Wine and Whimsy

Harry had a point.

Sitting there among 600 merry dinner guests in black tie and dinner gowns in a 15th-century vaulted fort lit by candles, the Cleveland labor mediator and Bronx native couldn't help but revel in the sheer hedonism of it all.

As the main course arrived, Harry Graham explained to the 13 others at his table, including me on his right: "You could not have this meal in the United States. The cholesterol police would be all over us."

This main course, delivered with military precision by a battalion of white-jacketed waiters, was a steaming ball of lightly creamed venison stuffed with foie gras and wild mushrooms. It was accompanied by the fourth wine of the evening, a red Burgundy from the cellars of the dinner's host, the Beaune Hospices. "In fact," Harry continued, "if my doctor -- we'll call her Doctor X -- could see us now, she would cast us into perdition."

This famous Sunday night candlelight dinner, held the third Sunday in November, is one of the climaxes of an annual weekend-long bacchanalia here in the heart of wine-growing Burgundy. Parades, marching bands, cork-pulling contests and silliness on the streets take over the entire town, making this one great party -- and excuse to visit.

Forget every notion you have about stuffy charity-social affairs. The weekend is a running Burgundian hullabaloo and a lot more fun and less pretentious than most wine events I've been to on both sides of the Atlantic. That evening at the candlelight dinner, a local folkloric group had already led us through an array of drinking songs, including a curious folk song called "Drink Another Shot," with the lovely refrain:

I love ham and I love sausage

I love ham -- it's good

But I like even better the milk of my nursemaid.

Just in case you haven't gotten the picture: These people like to party. Wine, food and their consumption -- perhaps more so than in any part of France, or the world, for that matter -- is the mother's milk of this culture.

This weekend in Beaune is to wine lovers what Disney World is to fans of anthropomorphized rodents. Beaune is, to many, the world's greatest wine town, set in a magnificent countryside of tiny villages with impossible names. Amazingly, the whole affair has kept a small-town feel. Anyone can watch the auction without bidding on casks of wine (usually limited to the trade and high rollers). Thousands come just for the action that takes place in the streets and in the winemakers' and merchants' cellars that form a system of catacombs below Beaune. I arrived on near impulse and lucked into purchasing my ticket to the dinner -- at about $150, a bargain when you consider everything -- at the last minute.

We had already been through pumpkin soup accompanied by a Pouilly Fuissé (2000). Then we'd savored scallop ceviche with black truffles, washed down by another Pouilly Fuissé, a 2002. Next up was the lobster ravioli accompanied by a Corton-Charlemagne (2000).