The Tour comes back to the Vaucluse and Mt. Ventoux
Sunday, September 28th, 2008
Hoorah! Last thursday Claud Haut the president of the conseil general du Vaucluse announced that it had been decided that the Tour de France’s penultimate stage next year will be from Montelimar to the summit of the greant de Provence..Mt. Ventoux, all glorious 1910 metres of it. The date the riders make their ascent of the mountain via our neighbouring village of Bedoin is the 25th July 2009….it will have been 7 years since the tour was last here. It should be a fantastic spectacle, made all the more special as Lance Armstrong who won the yellow jersey on this stage last time , is staging his grand come back next year. American interest will, needless to say, be enormous. Although the grueling ascent of Ventoux has become one of the key legends of the tour, helped perhaps by the death of British rider Tommy Simpson on the mountain in 1967, the tour has only included Ventoux on 13 occasions since 1950 and on only 7 occasions has the summit been the finishing line before: 1958 (Bedoin-Mt Ventoux, won by Charly Gaul of Luxembourg); 1965 (Montpellier-Mt Ventoux, won by Raymond Poulidor of France); 1970 (Gap-Bedoin, won by Eddy Merck of Belgium; 1972 (Carnon-Page - Mt. Ventoux, won by Bernard Thevenet of France); 1987 (Carpentras - Mt. Ventoux , won by Jean-Francois Bernard of France); 2000 (Carpentras - Mt.Ventoux, won by Marco Pantani of Italy); 2002 (Lodeve - Mt. Ventoux, won by Richard Virenque of France). Anyone readers of this post looking for accommodation over that week see our other web-site www.bighouseinprovence.com
of 2002, and that was a complete disaster. My heart goes out to them…
Cant quite believe it but this was the roll-call of beauties we sipped ( quaffed in some cases) with our guests from Dublin over the last two days: 
The following is from a piece I write bi-monthly for the Brighton community newspaper the West Hill Whistler: Ireland is better known for whiskey and Guinness rather than wine, however the Irish Wine Geese have long played a small but not insignificant role in the French wine industry. How so? After the battle of the Boyne in 1690 around 10,000 catholic supporters of the defeated James 2nd were forced to leave Ireland in a hurry. Many of them ended up on the west coast of France and in particular the Bordeaux area. The farmers amongst them very quickly adapted their skill set to the needs of local agricuture..principally the grape. To this day Irish names have been passed down via many distinguished properties, the likes of Barton at Leoville-Barton and negociants Barton and Guestier, the Lynch family of Lynch Bages, and the famous Cognac house of Hennessey. The Bartons aledgedly still regard themselves as Irish and carry Irish passports. This week I took a party of Dubliners to visit a latter-day Wine Goose, an Irish owned and managed property in the Cotes du Ventoux. Domaine des Anges is owned by Dublin businessman Gay McGuinness and the wine maker he has installed bares the unmistakably Irish name of Ciaran Rooney. Also from Dublin, Ciaran gained his oenology qualifications and cut his teeth, making wine in the Stellenbosch region of South Africa. Today he manages an estate of around 40 hectares at an altitude of 300 metres facing Mt. Ventoux.The appellation of Cotes du Ventoux was known for fairly mediocre cafe wines, mainly reds, struggling in the shadow of their illustrious neighbour the Cotes du Rhone with its exceptional Crus such as Chateauneuf du Pape, Gigondas etc. Ciaran Rooney by contrast, along with a handful of other domaines, has produced some exceptional wines from this terroir. Benefiting from the altitude with cooler evenings the vines here are able to preserve more acidity and freshness than their counterparts on lower ground resulting in elegant wines with some real complexity. The range comprises a basic white from the typical Rhone mix of Clairette, Bourboulenc, Grenache Blanc and Roussanne, and a red blend of Syrah/Grenache. There are also two premium cuvees named “L’Archange” , an 80% Syrah red and a 100% Roussanne. The latter is a gorgeous rich golden colour exploding with buttery apricot flavours…anyone who has tasted Beaucastel’s 100% Roussanne white Chateauneuf “Vieilles Vignes” (see ww.beaucastel.com ) will love this, and at a fraction of the price. The red L’Archange is bursting with smoky cassis and black cherry - it will please any fans of top notch Aussie shiraz and is perhaps the biggest giveaway in the range that Ciaran trained in a new world wine country. Well done the Irish wine geese! If Whistler readers want to sample how good these wines are, check out the specialist merchant www.bigredwine.co.uk which carries the full range from £5.95 to £9.95 for the L’Archange. For more on the domaine go to www.domainedesanges.com