Beaujolais: The Ten Crus, the Moulin-à-Vent and the Vineyard Chapels

Required Activities

• Taste at least three of the ten crus, such as Morgon, Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent, in producers' cellars

• Go round the Hameau du vin at Romanèche-Thorins, the village's park of the vine and wine, and then the Musée du compagnonnage Pierre-François Guillon next door for the journeymen's masterpieces in wood

• Walk up to the old windmill standing over the vines between Romanèche-Thorins and Chénas, the listed monument that gave its name to a cru which — with brouilly and côte-de-brouilly — is one of only three in the Beaujolais that is not also the name of a village

• Find Benoît Raclet's statue on the square named after him at Romanèche-Thorins, and his house 400 m south on the rue Benoît-Raclet: he beat the grape moth that was destroying the vineyards by scalding the vines, having noticed that the one trellis thriving in his hamlet was the one his kitchen emptied its hot dishwater onto

• Climb Mont Brouilly, 484 m, to Notre-Dame-aux-Raisins, put up after hail, frost and mildew wrecked the vineyard between 1850 and 1852, and read the two dedications: A Marie contre l'oïdium on the altar and A Marie protectrice du Beaujolais on the front. Look for the blue-tinged pierre bleue des Brouilly in the walls and the vines all round