LA PAULÉE DE MEURSAULT

La Paulée de Meursault is the lunch that closes the harvest in Burgundy, held on the Monday after the Hospices de Beaune sale in the cuverie of the Château de Meursault, eight kilometres south of Beaune: some hundreds of growers, merchants and their guests at long tables, each guest bringing bottles from his own cellar to share, the growers pouring from table to table, and a literary prize paid in a hundred bottles of Meursault. It is the third of the Trois Glorieuses, after the Clos de Vougeot on the Saturday and the sale at Beaune on the Sunday, and it is by invitation only.

The writer Philippe Claudel, a laureate, has quoted his grandmother: “Bien vaine est la vie pour qui la vit sans vin. Et combien il meurt sot, celui qui la passe sans Meursault.”

The Last Shovel

The Paulée was the meal at the end of the grape harvest, for the winemakers, the cellar workers and the village. Its name is said to come from the poêle, the one pan, or from the Burgundian word for the pelle, the last shovel of grapes into the press.

In 1923 Comte Jules Lafon, then mayor of Meursault, and Jacques Prieur invited thirty-five friends to a banquet to bring the old meal back. In 1932 it became a banquet proper, held then at the restaurant Le Chevreuil, and Lafon and Gaston Gérard created the literary prize: a hundred bottles of Meursault appellation, given each year by a different grower to a writer. Colette won it, and Maurice Druon and Hervé Bazin. It was not given from 1938 to 1949, and in 2020 the Paulée was cancelled. Frédéric Beigbeder, Sylvain Tesson, Dominique Bona, David Foenkinos and Jean-Baptiste Andrea are its laureates of the years since 2021.

The lunch has been held at the Château de Meursault every year since 1984, and is put on by the Association pour la promotion de Meursault, whose president is Philippe Ballot. Since 2000 Daniel Johnnes has given La Paulée de New York and San Francisco, with the Meursault organisers’ blessing.

The Lunch

The guests come with bottles, and the growers compete to put the best one on the table. They go from table to table pouring their own, and there are “Pas moins de cinq verres”, no fewer than five glasses, at each place. Jean-Robert Pitte called it “un Niagara de vins”. Aubert de Villaine remembers a Romanée-Conti of 1929, from vines never grafted, and a Musigny of Roumier’s from 1946, opened there.

It is a meal that can last several hours. As it goes on, in one account, “Les cravates se délient”: the ties come loose. The mayor of Meursault presents the literary prize. Anthony Hanson has said that there is not in the world “un banquet plus sympathique, plus convivial et plus chaleureux que la paulée de Meursault.”

In 2025, while the château’s cuverie was rebuilt, the ninety-second Paulée was held at the Hubert-Rougeot sports centre in Meursault, for nearly eight hundred guests, with Jean-Baptiste Andrea presiding.

The ninety-third is on Monday 16 November 2026, back in the cuverie, a hall thirty-five metres by thirteen built in 1835, restored for about €20 million and opened again in the middle of June 2026. Five hundred guests are announced.

What to Know

It is held on the Monday after the Hospices de Beaune sale; in 2026, on 16 November. The 2027 date has not been announced.

There are no tickets. It is a private luncheon, by invitation, for winemakers, merchants and guests invited by the organisers.

A lounge suit, with a tie. Nothing is published, and the ties are worn at the start.

The Château de Meursault is on the Rue du Moulin Foulot, eight kilometres south of Beaune by the D973, with parking at the château. The TGV reaches Beaune by way of Dijon or Lyon. Stay in Beaune, which has the weekend’s sale.

The mistake is to come without bottles. Each guest brings his own to share.

The Court

La Paulée de Meursault is not the Court’s own. Places at the lunch come only by invitation, and one is sought from the organisers on a member’s behalf; the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Beaune, the bottles to bring, and the table afterward. The Court is at Beaune the day before for the Hospices sale.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.