PARLEZ-VOUS FRANCAIS?: Making sure that tippling guests get home safely sans DUI’s is a concern for tourist groups. It’s common in France, for example, for guests to spend the night after big galas at hotels within walking distance. Locally, the VP and Fleur de Lis balls’ guests have booked on-site hotel rooms for decades.

The most recent group to get in on the safety-first issue is the St. Louis-Lyon Sister City Inc., which is including suggestions for nearby hotels in the invitations to its fundraiser for the Howard Nason and Stanley Goodman Scholarships. The scholarship supports U.S. and French student and teacher exchanges.

Their event on Nov. 20 at the landmark Racquet Club on Kingshighway will feature six-plus wines and four courses. The hotel suggestions are Mike and Steve Roberts‘ Hotel Indigo on Lindell Boulevard, and the Chase-Park Plaza at Kingshighway and Lindell Boulevard.

By French law, the Beaujolais Nouveau wine is released at one minute past midnight on the third Thursday of November in the Beaujolais district not far from Lyon. Popping open those bottles sparks off the party season across France.

For the past 22 years, St. Louisans have followed the French way as a tradition at the scholarship dinner, not a law. Racquet Club chef Tony Haacke and the party committee have planned a menu this year that includes escargots au champignons sauvages, duck, cassoulet, French cheese and the fall French classic, tarte tatin with creme Chantilly.

And, of course, a selection of new Beaujolais wines from several vintners will be sipped with the amuse bouches - nibbles - during the cocktail period. However, this colyumnist was told that the fun wine is so young and so fruit forward that to please the Francophiles and oenophiles, the meal itself will be accompanied by fine wines from Rhone vineyards also near Lyon.

The fundraiser’s committee includes: Michael and Mary Ann O’Reilly; Joseph and Blanche Touhill; Odette Chicoineau; Suzzanne and Lee Bouchard; David Eidelman; Maureen Elliott; Clare Fulvio; Cassandra Hamrick; Fay McKenna; Marc Molnar; sisters Jeanine Bubash Pelikan and Patti Bubash; Patricia Rice; Barbara Sandmel; and sister city board president, Susan Powers.

For more information about the $100-a-person dinner call 314-361-1816.