Dordogne’s Strawberry Festival

Published: April 22, 2025 by Caroline Mills 38

A highlight of the summer calendar in southwest France is the Fête de la Fraise. Caroline Mills pays a visit..

Sitting in my office writing, frost permeating the lawn outside and decorating the trees with winter white, I can smell them now in my mind. A heady scent of summer. Their pungent, vibrant fragrance.

Glossy red, plump and flushed with temptation, strawberries lure me to Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne’s market stalls, where they’re being sold, punnet after punnet, tray after tray. I take a bite through pursed lips into one fruit, shiny and immaculate; the acidic sweetness of the fresh juice explodes instantly, enticing me to reach for another. Then another.

Childhood dreams

As a child, I would wait with eager anticipation every June for the strawberry sign to appear at the pick-your-own farm outside our rural village in England, indicating the arrival of the new season’s crop ready for picking. Sitting among the straw-filled rows of strawberry plants, seeking out ruby red jewels beneath bright green leaves is one of my fondest memories of childhood.

It is, perhaps, no coincidence then that, as an adult, I await with eager anticipation the annual Fête de la Fraise in Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne. With the sorry closure of our local pick-your-own strawberry farm following the farmer’s retirement, it is an event that I am prepared to travel hundreds of miles for, not least because the festival is held every second Sunday in May, a whole month earlier in the year to quell my impatience to be seduced by the most seductive of berries.

Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, as its name implies, sits on the right bank of the River Dordogne in Corrèze, close to the departmental border with Dordogne. Its population of 1,300 residents swells in number by 20,000 visitors for one Sunday each year, enticed, like me, to pay homage to the strawberry.
Beaulieu, which is designated a Plus Beau Village de France for its pleasing aesthetics -a handsome collection of timber and stone riverside dwellings centring on the Eglise Abbatiale-is responsible for cultivating more than 400 tonnes of strawberries, 1% of all French production. When phylloxera devastated the vineyards around the village in the 19th century, growers turned to strawberries. Climatic conditions in the area, with its gentle valley slopes, are ideal for growing the fruit. Today Beaulieu is recognised by the national Site du Goût accreditation expressly for its strawberries.

A colourful jamboree

Like many festivals in France that celebrate local and regional produce, Beaulieu’s Fête de la Fraise is a colourful jamboree of community-led partying. Strawberries dominate, of course, from decorations dangling off lampposts and other village infrastructure to every wine bar, restaurant and pâtisserie making the most of strawberry-themed temptations. You’ll find strawberry cordial, strawberry beignets, strawberry mousses, strawberry.. you get the gist. In the market square, red hats, T-shirts, and other souvenirs-all red-tempt the bystander.

But there is no greater draw than the Marché des producteurs where local producers sell freshly-picked fruit by the punnet, and, more often, by the tray. Boxes stand two-metres high; by lunchtime, they’re all sold. So, too, strawberry plants for home cultivation.

Strawberry selection box

I scan the row of stalls showcasing some of the most perfectly ripe fruits ever seen. Producers compete, with homemade signs to highlight their methods of production, whether organic or en plein air. In the hierarchy of strawberry snobbery, fruits grown outdoors are deemed superior to those grown in polytunnels.

There’s plenty of choice. France grows more than 600 varieties of strawberry, and on the market stalls, signs indicate a selection for taste-testing: Cléry, Mara des Bois, Mariguette, Ciflorette, Flair, Sensation, and so on. But the variety of strawberry I’ve travelled across France for is the Gariguette, an elongated fruit with an unrivalled scent and flavour.

Volunteer effort

As visitors begin to grow in numbers in the cafés and bars, taking their seats for a café noir to accompany a strawberry-inspired treat, I return to the market square where volunteers are making the showstopping centrepiece of the festival, Beaulieu’s famous tarte aux fraises. In previous years, whether circular or square, this gigantic French fancy has set Guinness World Records for the largest strawberry tart in the world. This year’s tart, I estimate to be 20 metres long. And collaborative hands are required to create it. A pâtissier has already made the pastry base, now assembled by devoted volunteers, Bonne Maman, whose factory is in nearby Biars-sur-Cère, has sponsored the jam filling and local producers have provided the strawberries. A steaming cauldron of warm, sweet syrupy liquor awaits to be brushed on top-with a (clean) dustpan brush, such is the size and scale of the operation. Hours later, they’re still at it, carefully putting in place the last strawberries on Metre Twenty.

Tractors arrive to blockade the entrances to the village, not for the latest farmers’ protest against state regulation, but to close the road for the festivities to begin. Visitors have moved on from morning coffee to pulling corks from bottles of Bergerac wine to accompany a charcuterie platter-topped with strawberries, of course. Hotdogs and frites are washed down with strawberry cordial as a local line-dance group taps away on stage in denim and checked-shirts à la Texas.

A Corrèzian brass band pipes up, parading through the streets to Joe Dassin’s Dans les yeux d’Émilie: if you’ve not heard it before. it’s a catchy number-guaranteed you’ll be humming the tune in your sleep.

What a tart!

And then, at €3 a slice, the gigantic tarte aux fraises is served to the masses. A legion of volunteers returns to the festival showpiece, brandishing knives to portion up the 20m-long tart like some biblical rendition. Arms thrust forward as eager punters are served, some having waited all day, others having travelled hundreds of miles for the moment when a slice of the famous delicacy drops into their expectant box.

For the next 20 minutes, Beaulieu’s visitors can be seen perched on window ledges and walls, standing in clusters devouring a little slice of heaven, eyes glazed and delirious with the intoxicating combination of pastry, jam, fresh strawberries and syrup.

Summer beside the Dordogne river in Beaulieu-and in particular the second Sunday in May-can’t come soon enough. Vive la fraise!

Fête de la Fraise 2025 will take place on Sunday, May 11.

www.tourismecorreze.com/fr/tourisme_detail/beaulieu-sur-dordogne.html

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