Jul 29
Before getting swept away by the Tour de France, we hosted a tasting of the wines of Andrea Franchetti, the proprietor of both Tenute di Trinoro in Tuscany and Passopisciaro in Sicily. As our staff and guests tasted through the selections, we watched Andrea on the flat screen via Skype, answering questions and chatting with us about his life and wine production.
Everyone agrees that this year’s Tour de France was one of the best in years, with its peloton now a dope-free, level playing field. And so, after a most titillating stage on Thursday, I couldn’t wait for Friday to see what might crop up next. A short stage (109.5km) with three categorized climbs, including the hors categorie up l’Alpe d’Huez, Stage 19 was expected to cook the GC, and indeed, it did succeed in stirring up the lees in tanks.
Jul 23
Starting in Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux, just outside the region of Northern Rhone and approximately 30km from Gigondas, Stage 16 was one of undulating hills with one categorized climb just 11.5km from the finish in Gap. By 100km an escape group of ten men, including Thor Hushovd, had formed; and by the third hour the roads were wet and the sky was storming. Ryder Hesjedal of Garmin-Cervelo, who’d launched the initial attack, rode aggressively up the final climb, taking his teammate Hushovd. With a fellow countryman and a teammate in the break, Thor held the advantage until he reached the finish. And though the stage was done with the top three men in, the race for the GC was still for the taking. Behind the trio, with 7km to go, the defending champion Contador kept attacking, putting the hurt on Voeckler and the brothers Schleck, who couldn’t keep responding. By the end of the day, it was Contador who didn’t stop, climbing from 7th place overall to 6th, forcing Frank Schleck down from 2nd to 3rd, four seconds behind Cadel Evans.
Anne Pichon & Voeckler in the Leader’s Jersey
From Pau to Lourdes, Stage 13 circled a part of the Pyrenees in the southwest of France, and ended with a 16.4km hors categorie ascent up col d’ Aubisque. Originally created to classify mountain roads that cars could not expect to pass, the hors categorie climb still separates the climbers and the GC contenders from the rest of the peloton.
Jan Ullrich & Three Bottles from Jean-Luc Thunevin
Stage 10 began in Aurillac, just 240km east of Bordeaux, before running south and towards the region of Languedoc-Rousillion. And while there were a multitude of attacks in the final 10k, nothing could escape the force of HTC, a gale that stops short of nothing, when a Cavendish win is at stake. But wait…what’s this? At 400m, HTC peeled off so that Cavendish could thunder and roar, but there came Andre Greipel, the German rider from Omega Pharma-Lotto, riding up inside the center of the storm. Sneaking inside the silence of the eye, he bypassed Cavendish for a first time Tour win, across the finish line.
I miss Jan Ullrich, another German, from the Eastern side of town…
Stage 9 & Chateau des Rontets
Just as a challenging vintage can make or break a winemaker’s bottle, a particularly mountainous stage or a multitude of crashes can upset the GC or destroy a bike racer’s career. In every Tour de France we expect surprises, and this year, it was Stage 7, a particularly flat route from Les Mans to Chateauroux, that sent Jack from the box to steal the earth from beneath many a bike racer’s wheel.
It takes many forms of strength and style to compose a team, a roster of individuals with a variety of talents–the climbers, the sprinters, the time-trialists, and the star, but don’t forget the domestiques, who work for everyone else by throwing themselves into the fire.
This week, Stages 4-6, brought the riders out of the Valley of Loire, where they rode north and east, but still west of Sancerre, which is located near the center of France at the tail end of Loire. Producing crisp whites with three distinct styles, Sancerre is home to terres blanches, les caillottes, and silex– the region’s three different soils.
Jul 13
Thor Hushovd with a bottle of the “Bel Air” Vouvray Sec from Vincent Raimbault
This year’s Tour de France began with a couple of upsets. Beginning just 56 km south of Nantes in Loire, the Tour forwent the traditional prologue for a windblown skirt of the west coast that ended up exposing most everyone’s favorite to a undesirable finish.
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