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Tour de France 2020

Another day in which the pedalling peloton progressed purposefully through the spaces between France’s decent wine areas. Fortunately Marc Hirschi is from Bern, and according to Hugh Johnson decent wine is made around 20km from there on the shores of the Bielsee and the Thunersee lakes, pretty much equidistant from the city in opposite directions.

I reckon the Bielsee is a tiny bit closer, so we’ll go there. fineswisswine.com informs me that we have a choice of Chasselas (nein danke), Müller-Thürgau (meh), Pinot Noir aka Blauburgunder - stop, that’ll do...

I know someone who knows far more about Swiss wine than I do, so I’m putting a call out to @BTC3 - hello! Your job, should you decide to accept it, is to suggest a decent bottle of Blauburgunder from Bielsee for us. Thanks!
 
Sun Web gave us a demonstration of how not to win a stage a few days ago and today they brilliantly demonstrated how to win. Fantastic win.
 
Today’s stage winner, Daniel Martìnez, was born in Soacha, a suburb of Bogota. There is a Colombian wine industry, but it would appear the only area with any real pretensions is north of Boyaca, 100km distant.

On the other hand, towards the end of today’s route the Tour went by the front gate of what appears to be a decent winemaker...

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...in the village of Châteaugay, north of Clermont-Ferrand. The cyclists wouldn’t have seen the sign, because they came down the hill. I hope the traffic light was in their favour - I bet they would have been annoyed if they had been made to wait for a tractor or somesuch to come through in the opposite direction.

Châteaugay is an AOC under the umbrella designation of Côtes d’Auvergne. Once again, the area has been promoted only recently, being awarded AOC status in 2011. The Hachette guide thinks highly of the Tourlanias Châteaugay, often awarding it two stars (= ‘remarquable’) - including in the most recent edition, as the Tourlanias were proud to point out on their Facebook page -

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It’s 100% Gamay, and reasonably priced (in the 5-8€ bracket.) The production is tiny (1,100 bottles) so the chances of finding one outside of the immediate area must be pretty small. I certainly drew a blank trying to find any for sale online. But if the Hachette Guide can locate one, I’m sure we can too. So that’s my suggestion for the day.

https://www.hachette-vins.com/guide...el-tourlonias-chateaugay-2016-2019/201925801/

(I love the notion of some of these obscure winemakers looking themselves up on Google and wondering why they are on a website full of people arguing about which the best DAC chips, coffee grinders, sports cars, guitar amps and televisions.)
 
@Marchbanks Sorry for the delay! What little knowledge of Swiss wines I have comes from further to the East of the Bielersee, but I have it on good authority that Keller Am See is the one to go for. Smallest vineyard in the area. More details here.
 
@Marchbanks Sorry for the delay! What little knowledge of Swiss wines I have comes from further to the East of the Bielersee, but I have it on good authority that Keller Am See is the one to go for. Smallest vineyard in the area. More details here.
That will be just fine. I hope the OP knows which stages are missing, if any. Perhaps @sean99 would like to select a bottle of his favourite absinthe for stage 1? If not I found one yesterday that will appeal to the prog fans.

https://www.absinthe.de/en/absinthe...inthe-brevans/167/absinthe-brevans-h.r.-giger
 
Lots of calories in alcohol
7 (kilo)calories per gram. Against 4 for protein and carbs and 9 for fat. Organic acids (acetic, lactic, citric) are all 5 calories per gram, iirc.

Polar explorers to this day take suet with them and add it to their thermos of soup so they get the calories down them, otherwise they just can't eat enough.
 
Romain Bardait should not have been allowed to continue after his crash yesterday. He should have been seen by a doctor. Poor judgement there.

Agree - he had clear concussion - looked drunk when he tried to stand after the crash. Should have been an immediate retirement. Poor chap - I hope he's OK.

@Marchbanks - I wouldn't drink absinthe if you paid me. I might clean my paint brushes with it. Sorry I'm a beer only person.
 
Hats off to Søren Kragh Andersen, winner of today's stage. He comes from Denmark, Strib to be precise, in the Municipality of Middelfart. (I mention this last fact solely to get @Joe P onside.) Believe it or not, Denmark has a fledgling wine industry. Wine production has only been legal for twenty years, but there are now a number of producers taking advantage of global warming to practise viticulture in these more northerly areas.

One such producer is Skaersøgaard, located in Almind - and happily for us Almind is only about 15km from Strib (and also Middelfart.) So I think they should have the honour of supplying today's bottle. Here it is... I can tell you it is made from Leon Millot, Rondo and Regent grapes and is aged for a year in barriques. If you want to know more, I'll let you practice your possibly slightly rusty Danish. Oh yes, it costs 275 Krone, or a slightly eye-watering £34.

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Now I know why the Danes were always so happy to go to English pubs. £34, hmm. I do know that "-gaard" is a common place or family name , it shares a root with English "yard" and it means "the farm or household of". Literally "the yard of" I suppose .
 


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