Wine is a drink completely of its place, its unique flavours and character born from the land where it is grown. Dry heat, cool mountain breeze, even early morning mist can all play its part in creating a wine that speaks of its provenance. We know at Skedaddle that places that make exceptional wine, also make for great cycling. Warm reliable sunshine, sloping river valleys and gentle hillsides, peaceful picturesque villages and farming country – all form the key ingredients of some of our most popular cycling routes and holidays.
So, pull the cork on a bottle of wine and begin an armchair journey to some of our favourite cycling destinations in Europe – your chance to imagine yourself pedallin’ through the vineyards with us…
Smoked Salmon and Champagne
The classic way to start your Christmas meal, smoked salmon calls for a glass of the perennial celebratory drink, perfectly chilled Champagne. To be Champagne, a wine must do more than sparkle, it must come from the Champagne region in North-East France.
Champagne’s secret lies in its precise position, at a higher altitude than nearly all other wine regions (except for England) and within close proximity to the sea, which helps to ripen grapes despite its northern latitude, it owes a unique combination of soil and climate its success.
We’ve been running cycling tours in France for decades and now have a wide range of trips to choose from with something to suit everyone. Champagne Highlights is perfect if you’re looking for a relaxing tour of the region. If you enjoy a challenge, then the ultimate highlight of our France range is St Malo to Nice, where we cross through 19 regions of France, starting from Brittany’s St Malo shoreline and ending with the glamour and warmth of the Mediterranean waters of Nice on the French Riviera. While we may not pass through the Champagne region itself on this tour, a glass or two of bubbly is the perfect way to celebrate your achievement of cycling across an entire country.
Roast Turkey and Vermentino
Vermentino is a light-bodied white wine that grows mainly on Sardinia where it thrives in the warm and sunny climate. As you explore this mediterranean island’s beautiful coastline by bike on one of our many Sardinia cycling holidays, you can enjoy a glass of this refreshing wine, which makes a great alternative to Sauvignon Blanc.
Vermetino is delicious served with medium to lightweight dishes that are rich in herbs and spices, making it the perfect accompaniment to your turkey on Christmas day.
Lamb and Brunello or Carménère
Lamb is a popular choice throughout the festive season, it needs little done to it to taste amazing and pairs well with many different intense reds. On our Italian trips we often select Brunello di Montalcino, to compliment remarkably simple but well-cooked roast meats that appear on the Tuscan table. Brunello can evoke the flavours of sage and black pepper, often used as a seasoning for lamb, so they work particularly well together.
Montalcino is situated in Tuscany, it lies at about forty kilometres south of Siena in a hilly area listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site. Brunello di Montalcino DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita, the highest level of Italian wine appellations) is produced here, from nothing but 100% Sangiovese Grosso grapes.
Tuscany has an immense cycling history, its classic landscapes, rolling hills, cypress trees and medieval hilltop towns attract bike riders from all around the world. For an easy-paced road cycling holiday, with plenty of chance to explore and enjoy the regions wine heritage turn to the Giro della Toscana. For an off-road experience, taking in the famous white gravel roads of the region, Strade Bianche Explorer is perfect for gravel riding enthusiasts. Or why not hop on a mountain bike and explore the trails hidden in the woodlands, hills and valleys on the Sacred Routes Tuscany. During your stay in an Agriturisomo, a guest house on a farm, you can take a plunge in the infinity pool overlooking vineyards to begin your immersion into a landscape, perfect for wine and cycling.
Carménère is another great choice to accompany your lamb. As Chile‘s signature red grape, carménère makes intense and dark red wines with a distinctive flavours of subtle blackberry and green peppercorn notes. This grape found its way from France to Chile in the 19th Century but for a long time was wrongly identified as merlot. After pylloxera destroyed the carménère vineyards of Bordeaux, it was an exciting discovery that Chile was growing such a vast quantity of this delicious grape! A medium-bodied wine, carménère makes an excellent everyday food pairing wine so it’s a great one to have on hand throughout the festive season.
Nut Roast and Rioja
Nut roast has become the modern tradition for vegan or vegetarian dinners, its robust, rich flavours put it on a par with roast meats for flavour and because of that, it pairs fantastically with Rioja and other reds.
Rioja is one of the most well-known and most widely drunk Spanish wines. Despite wine being grown in the region since Roman times, the Rioja we drink now is a relatively young style of wine – only 150 years old and strongly influenced by French winemakers. La Rioja region is divided into three zones, two Spanish and one Basque with their own unique soils and environments.
La Rioja region spreads itself out along the fertile Ebro valley, hemmed in by the dramatic Cordillera Cantabrica (we cross it on our Basque Country to Andalucia iconic journey too) and the lofty peaks of the Sierra de La Demanda threaded by sinuous roads, perfect for exploration by bike. If you want to explore the patchwork of low-growing vines, coloured soils and whitewashed buildings then our dedicated Riojan road cycling tour Ruta del Vino is the one for you. Explore an area boasting more than 500 wineries and meet the people who live, breathe and probably even dream wine! As well as wine there is also some of the finest food in Spain, choose from hearty mountain stews and fantastic tasty local meats and game, foods that naturally complement the wines of the region. For more riding options in the north of Spain, we recommend our leisure cycling journey from Bilbao to San Sebastian, where you’re not too far from La Rioja region and will get an opportunity to experience the fantastic food and wine this part of Spain is famous for.
Christmas pudding and Sauternes
While many people will return to a sparkling wine with their pudding, a dessert wine is another fine option. Sauternes, made in Bordeaux, with its sweet, flower-scented, deep gold liquid is completely unique amongst wines. It has a richly-textured syrupy feel but is far from cloying and is absolutely delicious chilled. What makes it so specific to the region is the mists that form along the narrow River Ciron on autumn evenings that give rise to noble rot, a peculiar form of mold that allows water to escape, the grape to wither and its sugars, acids and flavours to become more concentrated.
Our trips to France offer the perfect opportunity to sample a glass or two of Sauternes (or any other of the equally famous Bordeaux wines for that matter), as it pairs well with not only pudding but also with cheese, terrine, foie gras, even ice cream – a wonderful way to cap off any meal after a rewarding day on the bike.
Panettone and Prosecco
A perfect Italian pairing at any point in your celebrations, Prosecco is now a ubiquitous crowd pleaser at every party. From the north-east of Italy, sales of Prosecco have gone through the roof in the last few decades, to the extent that the production area of Prosecco was enlarged in 2008 to encompass nine whole provinces.
New to our range of holidays are three new iteneraries that explore the delightful Prosecco region of Italy since it not only offers great cycling with its quiet roads, rolling vineyard-lined hills, and areas of natural beauty but also produces some of the best food and wine in Italy. Starting in the historic and cycling-mad town of Treviso, our trips offer a unique mix of place-to-place as well as centre-based cycling that gives you a chance to get to know the area better, meet with local producers, and enjoy the wine and food on offer, all without the worry of packing up your bags each morning.
Other options include our South to North Italian Grand Traverse that concludes in Venice and gives you the opportunity to sip Prosecco in Veneto, one of the areas of its production, to celebrate the conclusion of an unforgettable 1,000-mile ride. For a more leisurely experience, you can encounter typical landscapes of the Veneto countryside on our Lake Garda to Venice ride, also suitable for families.
Cheese and Port
You can’t beat a little bit of cheese and Port to round off a meal, even if you thought you couldn’t squeeze in another mouthful! Port is made by adding brandy to red wine, which not only preserves more of the natural sugars from the grapes but increases its alcohol content and its sweetness. Whilst Ruby Port remains the most popular, there are many different types including red, white, rosé, vintage ports and an aged style called Tawny Port. As a refreshing change to the traditional rich sweet red ports, white port is becoming an increasingly popular cocktail base.
Port is made from grapes grown in the Douro region of Portugal. It is in some ways one of the most inhospitable places to make wine, but the Douro river is flanked by improbably steep-sided terraced vineyards, with very little soil and incredibly high temperatures in summer. In its favour, it is stunningly beautiful!
The vineyard terraces act as visible contour lines, hugging the hillsides to clearly reveal the gradients and shapes of this hilly landscape. It is also where you can find the N222, long-held to be the most beautiful road in the world. It travels in parallel with the sinuous movement of the Douro river. Exploring this UNESCO World Heritage Site by bike on our Vineyards of the Douro Valley tour and sampling some Port and other wines in the quintas (vineyards), is a relaxing way to get to know more about this extraordinary area. Our well-loved Azure Ocean Ride also begins in Porto, well known for being the home of Port wine (it’s in the name!) – so we’ll be sure to have a glass to salute the journey ahead and ride along the Douro River on our first day.
Late-night by the fire and Whisky
As Christmas night draws to a close, and you clutch your heavy food-laden stomach, there is room for just one more drink and it has to be a whisky. Rolling its smoky, peaty scent around the glass as you stare deep into the embers of the fire takes you away to wild, windy hillsides, dramatic views and the stunning scenery of the Highlands in Scotland.
We love the experience of cycling in the Scottish Highlands and whisky is a big part of that. On our Highlands Coast to Coast mountain bike tour you can trace your journey across the country in the single malts of each distillery we go past! Certain whisky names will forever conjure up the memory of singletrack for us now.
A little west of Inverness, the start and finish point for our Tour d’Ecosse, you can find the Glen Ord distillery, one of a growing number of single malt scotch whisky distilleries on the Black Isle. Head south to the Borders and you’ll find yet more delicious whisky cycling the Kirkpatrick C2C. Whether you choose tarmac or trail under your wheels, if you enjoy an aged single-malt, you will love discovering names you have never heard before and linking them to the landscapes you cycle through.
Feeling inspired? Check out our full range of cycling holidays to find your next adventure guaranteed to be filled with flavour.