Decanter Magazine

Cycling in Bordeaux

by Patrick Matthews

I'm getting something floral, plus tobacco and damp hay and a faint earthy farmyard character. We're talking one of the Bordeaux satellite regions, like Bergerac ? Actually I know we're somewhere near Bergerac; at any rate we're only a field or two from the banks of the wide Dordogne river which we we've crossed and re-crossed twice today - you can feel its cool dampness in the air.

No I'm not smelling wine, for now - I'm smelling France. One thing wine and cycling have in common is that they wake up your senses. The French are passionate about both (though if anything they're more serious about le vélo than le vin.) and more and more people are visiting the country's vineyards on two wheels. Burgundy's Côte Châlonnaise boasts a new cycle route, the Voie Verte; the Médoc in Bordeaux is now criss-crossed with tracks. And there are increasing numbers of organised cycling holidays on offer, many of which feature trips though wine country.

As a Londoner I own a bicycle (a yellow Dawes, bought long ago in the semi-criminal Saturday market under Westway) and I enjoy wasting French winegrowers' time in their cellars. I'm not convinced I need anyone's help to combine the two activities. But an outfit who, rather forbiddingly, call themselves The Chain Gang are going to try to persuade me otherwise.

This is what brings me to Les Eyzies de Tayac in Périgord, where I'm standing in light drizzle outside a lean-to building. Over the next week our ten-strong group will cover around 200 miles and visit x vineyards, coming into Bergerac from the hilly east, and ending up in the flat Médoc estuary beyond Pauillac. 'At least it's downhill,' someone says.

For more than an hour Ciaran, our 19-year-old Glaswegian guide, has been changing saddles, raising and lowering saddles, taking off toe clips, putting on toe clips, handing out comfy 'gels' for extra saddle cushioning. He's wielding an Allen-key - spanners are old hat, apparently. On his own bikes he has the scary modern alternative to version of toe clips, which lock your shoes to the pedals. Ciaran is very serious about cycling - recently he rode the whole way from St Malo to Rome - but is only a recent convert to wine. He's not sure that his teetotal parents would approve but he's become 'fascinated by that mix of science with a culture that the French don't even realise they're part of. Like they say, le vin c'est le plaisir.'

Some of us haven't been on a bike for years. It occurs to me that some of the requests for modifications may be aimed at putting off the moment of truth. Our group's sheer diversity reminds me of the 60s cartoon Wacky Races. Jeff, a retired senior council officer, came down to breakfast in a retina-bursting 'Joker'-team cycling top, and has revealed that till recently he did 'time trials' (whatever they are). I mentally cast William, a young American pharmaceutical executive, as Dick Dastardly. William has come equipped, not just with a wing mirror, but a Global Positioning by Satellite System. Why can't I have one?

Was it the pleasure of getting stuck into some impressive 1996 Cahors on our first night that left some of us somewhat muddled? As we stop in a market square for our first breather, it emerges that Sophie, who's William's girlfriend, seems to think that Claire, (a university administrator who's quite a serious wine buff) is married to Jeff and is called Carol. I put her right and she confesses: 'I thought they seemed a bit distant with each other - not even sharing rooms.' Ha ha ha. Much later it turns out 'Claire' really is called Carol, but couldn't be bothered to correct me.

HS and Winnie are the most elegant members of the group. They're a young couple working in Hong Kong's environmental protection department, and before setting off each day they spend at least 20 minutes doing elegant stretches that look more like performance art.

It turns out that they hadn't planned to go on a cycling holiday - let alone a relatively arduous one. They're wine lovers, with a particular enthusiasm for Champagne, and had tried in vain to find a walking holiday through France's vineyards that would coincide with their planned summer in Europe. When we get going they're soon trailing the group. Winnie is clearly scared in traffic, and her bike judders as she gets on or off 'I cycle a bit in the gym,' HS tells me later, 'But in the gym you can get off when you're tired.'

On the contrary - and despite hopes that we'd just coast downhill to the Atlantic - we keep climbing. Our first stop off is at Château de Tiregand in the Bergerac sub-region of Pécharmant - from where the proprietor, M de Saint-Exupéry (of the family of the author of 'Le Petit Prince') points across a valley to his friend Hugh Ryman, the flying winemaker, at Chateau de la Jaubertie. The following day we're even further up a hill, at Montravel. We're learning the hard way that 'vines love an open slope'. But soon none of us would rather turn up on four wheels. There's the feeling that maybe you're impressing the growers, however marginally, when you ride up out of the mist. Plus I believed it was easier to taste; in fact the great Beaujolais oenologue Jules Chauvet, (the man who designed the ISO tasting glass,) used to insist on tasting in the open air.

And the advantage of going as a group is that peer pressure ensures you stay the course. Left to my own devices I'm not sure I'd have stayed the course. But Ciaran has become an expert in using bluff, encouragement and mild deception to get everyone to complete the required 35 miles a day - even, he tells me, with participants who've been booked in unwillingly by spouses who would like a fitter partner.

I ask him what his worst experience has been to date. He goes silent and looks at his feet. 'Come on,' I press him. 'Can it be that bad?' 'Well,' he says, 'there has been one accident.' It was a rider who underestimated the power of modern cycle brakes and knocked out a couple of teeth, necessitating an immediate trip to casualty. 'But she was really plucky and insisted on finishing the trip with us.'

Food is one of the incentives Ciaran can offer. We stop at a different hotel every night - our bags are taken ahead by taxi. The food is usually great, though the second hotel we stay at has been infected by the meaningless menu-speak, offering for example a 'farandole de crudités'. (A farandole is a kind of dance but I'm glad to say the grated carrot, etc, resolutely stayed put.). The following night, we were in Sainte Foy-la-Grande, on the easternmost edge of the Bordeaux region, in the kind of unchanging French hotel where the breakfast room still has flock wallpaper and the food had an equally pleasingly timeless quality. It had not appealed to one North American guest in a previous group. She'd asked Ciaran for a taxi to the nearest McDonalds - and got one.

For me the discoveries of the trip were the vins licoureux. Dominique Vidal of Chateau Fonmourges in Monbazillac was able to talk authoritatively about the longevity of these wines - a few years ago he tasted the contents of bottles raised from the merchant ship Amsterdam, which sank in the Channel in 1748. 'It wasn't just the historic interest,' he said. 'The wine was really good.' Daniel Hiquit at Château Puy Servain in Montravel is also making excellent sweet wines, drawing on his experience working at Château d'Yquem.

It was at Puy Servain that I experienced a personal epiphany. Winnie turned to me and asked me if I'd be kind enough to explain malolactic fermentation. Suddenly the years of labouring to understand wine seemed to have a meaning. Usually people ask me not to explain malolactic fermentation. The high point of Carol's trip came soon afterwards, as we pedalled down the long road leading down from the estate to the river banks. A chicken appeared from behind a hedge, dithered, and at the last possible minute rushed across the path of my bike. 'It wouldn't have been so funny with anyone else,' Carol confessed, wiping tears from her eyes. 'But with Patrick ..'

I'm still trying to work out what she meant.