The twelfth stage of the Tour de France 2023 must cross the Beaujolais mountains, Thursday July 13, and walk through some terroirs with lively names. A final “injured”according to the organizers of the event, which reminds us that the wine region is also a terrain popular with cyclists and cycle tourists.
On the road to the Tour
Before finishing the stage in the plain, in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, the riders of the Tour de France will cross some of the most famous vineyards of the region: Chiroubles, Juliénas, Chénas, Fleurie or Villié-Morgon. They won’t have time to check whether, as Michel Houellebecq sketched them rather quickly in Annihilate (Flammarion, 2022), local winegrowers are “probably the only French farmers, with the exception of a few grain growers, who managed not to be permanently on the verge of bankruptcy”. Neither of observe them shearing their vines or clenching their jaws if the storm and hail threaten the harvest to come. But they will be able to validate, from one hillside to another, the reputation of “breaking the legs” of this formidable playground. “From the Col de la Croix-Rosier to the Fût d’Avenas, there is everything you need for cycling in Beaujolais”, recalls the former glory of the corner, Antonin Rolland, 98 years old. And the walk is sometimes embellished with small pleasures, remembers the one who wore the yellow jersey of the Tour de France 1955 for a long time, when “in the morning, during training, you can see the Mont-Blanc massif in the distance”.
On the road to the castles
Nipple placed away from the Beaujolais mountains and topped with a chapel built to thank Heaven for its help in the fight against the proliferation of mildew, Mont Brouilly welcomes on its sides the two northernmost appellations of the wine region. (brouilly and côte-de-brouilly), as well as two access roads. Two pretty steep paths to take, one starting from Quincié-en-Beaujolais, the other from Saint-Lager, to better admire from above the Val de Saône, to the east, or the foothills of the Massif Central, West.
If the hill is largely covered with vines, it also conceals quarries of this rustic blue stone which makes the pretty walls of the old buildings in the area. Without going too far from Brouilly, the bike ride can continue from one castle to another. From the most famous, that of La Chaize, in Odenas, which houses the largest Beaujolais cellar and can be visited by appointment, to the most imposing, such as those of Varennes, on the heights of Quincié, Pizay or Corcelles, in the plain, passing through the most astonishing, Arginy, in Charentay – legend says that it would have housed part of the Templars’ treasure. To eat, a gourmet stopover is possible at the Château du Souzy, in Quincié.
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