The best wine for cycling wine enthusiasts?
 

Is Jochen Beurer’s “In der Luft” Swabian white blend the best wine for cycling enthusiasts? Certainly the label, a picture of Jochen skyin’ a huge gap jump back in the ‘90s on an MTB, is a compelling endorsement, but he’s also an ex-European BMX champ, so he’s got the bonafides. On the winemaking side, he farms biodynamically and makes natural wines, so there, too, he has the right stuff.

Anyone have a stronger candidate for the title, Best Wine for Cycling Wine Enthusiasts?

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shouldn't drink and ride

That is a good one.

I'm lazy, I just bring 1959 haut brion on short tours.

The best wine for this cyclist is whatever is in my glass. Especially if someone else is buying.

Pfft.

I do it the other way around.

The best wine is whatever's in my glass (but yes organic and biodynamic are preferable).

Not into wine. I prefer beer.

Is it ok to drink after the ride ??

Mad Dog 20-20.

Most Americans that rely on their bicycle as transportation seem to consume more wine & other alcoholic beverages than those Americans that do not use a bicycle as transportation.

Thankfully, the DUI laws have been strengthened over the past 40 years, and now prosecutors are much more aggressive and judges take sentencing seriously, which they did not do before about 1985, because the Judges and the public in general considered it normal and okay to consume alcoholic beverages and then if one can still walk to the car and put the key in the ignition, they should be okay to drive. There was no real emphasis on designated driver and the B.A.C. content threshhold in most states was still significantly higher and penalties for DUI were a joke before about 1985 or so....

So here you have some of the most popular wines among the majority of daily bike riders here in the USA:

BumWine.com

Health conscious bicycle riders tend to use the bicycle mostly for exercise and recreation & sport, although a small contingent of those do commute to their jobs and an ever so small extremely small subset of those do use their bicycle for transportation.

Well perhaps the byproduct of stricter DUI enforcement, prosecution, penalties & fines has been to increase the cycling community in a perverse sort of way, but it has definitely had at least a modest impact of reducing slightly the number of drunk drivers behind the wheel. Most everyone over fifty has probably known at least one person that died much too early because someone was driving drunk. Please think about limiting your alcohol consumption to a minimum if you must drive home. It is not illegal to consume alcoholic beverages and then drive your car. Though, it is illegal in most states to have an open container in the car. Use good judgement, and if you must drive home, try to limit your drinks to just one, or perhaps two maximum assuming hours between drinks and time of exit, and you're not doing so on an empty stomach. If you weigh below about 135 to 140 pounds, it might be a good idea to limit your alcohol consumption to just one drink, maximum, if you must drive home.
Holiday parties, get togethers are again happening more since the Covid vaccines (Moderna & Pfizer ...) have proven to be excellent at preventing serious infection and make it not much of a risk, if you've received them.....delta is ready when you aren't, vaccines save lives..... Don't Drink & Drive! Eat, drink, and be merry, and if you must drive home, limit yourself to just one, to be safe and well within the legal limit, otherwise find a non-drinking designated driver, or use UBER, LYFT, or TAXI CAB.

You must of been drinking very heavy while writing this. Only a drunk person would make such a statement..

I remember drinking wine as a young one ridding with the old boys in Vicenza Italy. We would stop, water up, make adjustments, catch our breath, maybe eat some bread, and wash it down with wine so dry it could suck the spit right out of your mouth...

That local wine usually did not really have a name other than Garganega...

Been so long since I have had MD 20/20 or Strawberry Hill I am thinking I'll try some one last time...

I don’t know when you were young, but forty or fifty years ago, the Soave zone, nearby to Vicenza, made quite a big boom for itself marketing industrial grade wines from garganega in the USA. I recall, as a kid, seeing the ads on TV and thinking that Franco Bolla lifestyle was so cool…. Anyway, the focus has really shifted in the past 20 years or so, and there are many producers now taking a more earnest and serious approach to Soave. Roberto Anselmi is one such producer, and he even abandoned use of the name Soave in protest of the generally low quality of the appellation; I don’t know if he’s back to using it or not. Stefano Inama is another which comes to mind, remarkable for some of the elegant, barrel aged expressions he produces, like Vigneto du Lot.

A staple in my cooking kit.


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Man, if you’re actually opening bottles with that, you should do yourself a favor and get a good corkscrew! It’d be so much easier, faster, and convenient to use a good waiter’s type tool, and it’s just as portable as that thing.

Favorite whine:

"Damn it's raining again. I don't want to ride in the rain and I hate getting wet".

Extremely light for touring. I like to cook relatively elaborate meals on tour, so my cooking gear is already heavy enough. Easy to open bottles of wine with something like that.

My favorite cycling whine is "Oh, no, ANOTHER hill?"

Not much of a wine drinker. Personally, I prefer something locally produced:



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Yes, it's a legitimate distillery. Their Apple Pie moonshine is delicious!

For emergency use while touring, I can see the appeal of the T-handle. Light it is, easy to open bottles it ain’t…though I concede that may depend, to some degree, on the quality of wine being opened. A short cork in a young wine will generally pull easier than a long, high-quality cork in a bottle which has aged awhile. In any case, we thankfully have a pretty good selection of wines which are closed under screwcap or canned nowadays, obviating the need for any tool whatsoever. A friend of mine is just now launching a new and innovative paper bottle packaged wine, the first in the N. American market, which is screwcapped, but is also 100% recycleable and very lightweight, which would be handy if you’re packing wine out with you on the bike! https://signal7wines.com

I’ve never had a problem, even with good wine. I don’t use it at home.

You’ve been lucky! The helix on those kinds of t-handle puller is generally extremely short and has a shallow pitch, so it’s much more likely to core or pull apart a cork. The best tools have helices long enough to get purchase throughout the length of a cork, and both have a tapered design such that the turns are narrower at the tip than the top and wider pitch in order to reduce the likelihood of pulling through, or coring, the center of the cork. Of course, mechanical advantage is a thing, too, and a lever cannot fail to reduce the amount of force required compared to pulling straight up. But hey, if your triceps are ripped… :p

Clif family wines. The same people as Clif bars.

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A picture of the founder climbing the Stelvio in Italy on the bottle.

They host regular rides from the tasting room in town, and they have TdF-style kilometer markers on the climb past their estate winery.


But the real answer is “whatever bottle is open now.”