Allan Hall; Inspired the Beaujolais Race

Allan Hall, 71, the wine writer, convivial connoisseur and copious imbiber who set off the annual Beaujolais Nouveau Race by offering a bottle of champagne to the first reader who put a bottle of the year’s fruity red French wine on his London Fleet Street desk, died April 26 in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, England.

For a century, French law has permitted release of the year’s crop of Beaujolais specifically at midnight on the third Thursday of November. But Hall’s column in London’s Sunday Times gave the date a whole new impetus--launching fleets of trucks, trains and jumbo jets from Lyon-area vineyards to be aided by everything from parachutes to motorcycles and elephants to dispense the bottles from Japan to Africa.

Hall, a journalist who wrote primarily stylish lifestyle stories, spent his retirement operating a “wine academy” from his home, selling fine wines and teaching people to drink it.