Robert V. Camuto

Times like Wednesday night you really appreciate the near year-old French smoking ban in restaurants and bars. La Fontaine Aux Vins, the funky/jazzy wine bar in Valbonne Village, was packed for the launch of Corkscrewed on the Cote D'Azur.

“Is this the cheese line or the wine line?”

That seemed to be the question most asked Thursday night by an over-capacity crowd of 300 at New York’s Alliance Francaise celebration of the arrival of Noo-voh.

(One observation about New Yorkers: They like to know where the line is so they can cut!)

I'm headed to New York to join the Alliance Francaise in celebrating the 2008 Beaujolais Nouveau. (Sort of surreal crossing the Atlantic from France to uncork the Noo-Voh! in my native Manhattan.)

As champion of small, independent, natural environment-friendly producers, why am I celebrating Beaujolais Nouveau-- oft associated with huge- scale production, flavored yeasts and techno galore?

Two reasons:

Okay so maybe this isn’t the most pressing question of the day. Will Obama be good for wine?

I had a sort of epiphany about a week ago and it came from meeting Saint Francis.

No better way to clear the head than hitting the road on a September morning in Provence and setting out with pruning clippers for the vineyards.

My winemaking partner Ken McNeill and I crossed a swath of the Les Maures, the dark low mountain chain of the central Var. (The village of Gonfaron-- home to the legend of flying donkeys--is pictured above.)