The Chain Gang Cycle Tours

Wine Tasting in Balham - Again

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Last week was the April edition of Ruth Alexander-Gordon’s new wine-tasting club in Balham, south west London. She’s called it ‘Wines, Vines and Good Times’, or something like that.

Not sure about the name, but we spent an evening tasting some Cabernet Sauvignon wines from around the world in the company of the lovely Sarah, so I can forgive a slight concern over the name.

Here’s a link to Ruth’s notes about the wines we tasted. At the time I must admit I had a bit of an issue on the night, but on reflection (I’m not sure ‘sober reflection’ would be accurate or appropriate) I’m actually rather pleased.

I have a real blind spot about wines that are not from France or Italy. I don’t dislike them, I just don’t know anything about them. Of the wines we tasted, two were from France.

But the first was a cabernet sauvignon from the Vins de Pay’s D’Oc. Well, that’s not going to be very nice, is it? The classic cabernet sauvignon would be an aged claret from one of the better estates of the haut médoc. It definitely wouldn’t be a Vins de Pay de Don’t Bother (what a snob I am!).

We had a 2nd French wine, a claret this time, but a very ordinary version, an Appellation Bordeaux Controllée.

Necessarily a blend (cabinet sauvignon with merlot) - no appellation (AOC) wine in France can have a single variety of grape and publicise it on the label. Except Gewürtztraminer from the Alsace appellation. As an aside, isn’t that cool?

One of the reasons I enjoy Alsatian Gewürtztraminer is because you know it’s the only AOC wine in the whole of France that is allowed to put the grape variety on the label.

I don’t know why, but I like that, and it’s Dorothea’s favourite wine as well, a delightful lady from Freiburg, now of Sunbury-on-Thames, and a Chain Gang Cycling regular.

Anyway, at Ruth’s tasting the stand-out wine was a South African - guess where Ruth’s from? But it was gorgeous, and worth a name check: Annandale 2001.

The only minor gripe I had was that if I wanted to present cabernet sauvignon at it’s best, any Chain Gangers who have cycled the Bordeaux Winetrail could name you half-a-dozen wines from our trip along the Dordogne and into the médoc.

It wouldn’t be a Vine de Pays d’Oc, and it wouldn’t be a plain old AOC Bordeaux. But on reflection it was nice to be taken through a few wines by someone who doesn’t have my disgraceful bias towards ‘old world’ wines. Especially the Annandale, but the wines from the US and from Argentina were lovely too.

I’m minded to do a bit of a shout for the vineyards and the wines we meet. That can be a project for next week. But a lovely evening, thanks Ruth.

Nobody’s Immune To Nutters – They’re Everywhere

Like everyone else, The Chain Gang gets a few nutters along on our trips. One of the nicest and most interesting nutters is Tim Ockwell - I’ll tell you why he’s a nutter in a minute.

His key saving grace is that he’s usually in the company of two delightful ladies, his wife Glenys and their friend Annette. But Tim is seriously into his fitness.

Last year in Semur-en-Auxois in Burgundy, we were all posing under the start line flags of the Tour de France - Semur was one of the start towns in 2007.

French towns make a huge thing out of this and pay large sums to be a start or finish town. We arrived 2 months after the end of the Tour de France, but all the flags and bunting were still out.

The correct etiquette is to pose under the ‘Start’ flags pretending that the peleton of the Tour de France in 2007 included a rider of about 100 Kg, well into his 40s, in shorts and a T-shirt riding a hybrid bike, along with 2 pals one of whom celebrated his 60^th birthday in 2004 as I recall.

Either this was some sort of ‘Legends’ event, or me, Gary and Steve messing about. But not Tim. Although he was on holiday, he had to keep up his training for a triathlon he was entered in, so as soon he got to the hotel, he was off running as part of his training.

Anyway, the point of this posting is to congratulate Tim on completing the London Marathon earlier this month in an admirable three and a half hours.

He has an extraordinary dog as well that runs with him - dogs aren’t allowed in the marathon itself, but two weeks prior to the race, on a 22 mile training run, Tim’s dog ran along quite happily.

Is it possible that there could be dog marathon event? I’ve been to the greyhound racing, which is great fun, but what about dog marathon running?

Tim & Glenys’ dog could easily do it. Anyway, well done Tim, I think that’s amazing.

In the photo you can see that Glenys and Annette have a much clearer understanding of what you’re meant to do on a Chain Gang holiday.