This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 142
“Good morning, it’s Bernard Hinault here. I received your message… but it’s been 40 years and I had nothing to do with this project. I think I drank some at my farewell party but it’s so long ago I can’t remember. So, voilà. Have a good day.”
It is not often that you receive a voice message from a five-time Tour de France champion – although my request to enter the Badger’s sipstream has been flatly denied. I was rather hoping that Hinault would open up and pour forth about an intriguing bottle of 1983 Côtes de Bourg bearing his image and celebrating his retirement – one of six bottles I picked up at an online auction during the 2025 Tour de France for the princely sum of €79.
The connection between Hinault – a proud Breton – and the Château Peychaud, a little-known winery near Bordeaux, has me scratching my head. I’d love to hear how this commemorative Merlot was, in its long past heyday, suitably bold, peppery and complex, a little fruity and astringent at times, with undoubtedly good legs and an aftertaste that occasionally packed a punch (notably of an afternoon on the French Riviera).
But with Hinault effectively telling me to put a cork in it, I’m forced to focus on something more tangible: the two bottles from Francesco Moser’s still-thriving winery in the hills above Trento in northern Italy. With a picture of ‘Lo sceriffo’ (The sheriff) breaking Eddy Merckx’s hour record in 1984 on the label, the ruby red Teroldego is only slightly darker than the sherry-hued Chardonnay inside the bottle displaying Moser in the maglia rosa from his Giro d’Italia triumph later that same year.
“The photo is of me climbing the Pordoi Pass from Arabba,” Moser confirms. “I actually lost the pink jersey that day, only to reclaim it in the final time-trial to Verona. I’d been chasing the trofeo senza fine since 1973 so to finally win the Giro was especially meaningful.”
It’s through Moser’s son Carlo, who manages the family estate, that I field some questions to a rider whose career tally of wins is surpassed only by Belgian greats Merckx and Rik Van Looy. Now 41, Carlo was born just three days into his father’s bid to win the Giro. “I remember being in a pre-stage meeting at Pietrasanta when I got a call with the news of my son’s birth,” Moser recalls. “That evening, after the race in Florence, I drove home to meet him and see my wife. Then returned to Bologna in time for the next stage.”
Moser’s pink jersey and the aerodynamic curio of a bike he used to blitz the hour record are both on display in a private cycling museum next to the tasting room at the family’s Maso Warth winery, set up in the 1980s. If Moser’s father Ignazio produced the first wine from the vines planted by his father Adriano, it was Francesco and his fellow cyclist brother Diego – whose name also adorns the two 1986 bottles – who turned the original Palù di Giovo winery into a viable business.
Before swapping barrels for bidons and must for musettes, Moser toiled on the steep-sided vineyards of the Cembra valley – hours of demanding manual labour to which he has always attributed his physical strength as a rider. The first bottles of Moser wine were produced to meet the demand by fans of Francesco, Diego and their older brother, Aldo.
“In the 80s and 90s, most of our wine was sold because Francesco was very famous,” Carlo says of these putative tifosi of the terroir. “It was helpful at first, but it then distracted people from the product. Most customers today are suspicious of wines that belong to famous people. We didn’t want to be the wine of cycling, which is why we decided a few years ago to remove all the pictures of Francesco riding his bike from the labels.”
Beyond the family name, the sole cycling reference today is the number 51.151 that appears on the hallmark Trentodoc sparkling wines. “We named the wine after the number of kilometres covered by Francesco in Mexico City in 1984 for his hour record. Most people think it refers to the latitude of the winery or something to do with the altitude – they don’t realise it’s related to cycling,” Carlo explains.
Returning to the two 1986 bottles in my collection, Carlo does not hold much hope. “Each vintage of these two wines was about 15,000 bottles but I don’t believe they are still drinkable,” he says. “They have probably been exposed to too much light and warm temperatures. They were not super-high quality in the first place – just table wines sold for 4,000 lire, which is no more than two euros.”
A fortnight before Moser won the prologue of the 1984 Giro, he finished tenth in the Vuelta a España, around nine minutes behind a rookie 23-year-old Frenchman making an eye-catching debut. Éric Caritoux had been called up to the Skil-Sem team as an eleventh-hour replacement for Sean Kelly. Caritoux’s unlikely six-second win over home favourite Alberto Fernández is familiar territory for me because I interviewed him for Eurosport a few years ago. This gives me something of an in when I ring the affable 65-year-old to quiz him about the 1983 bottle of Cuvée Spéciale Éric Caritoux in my collection.
“Calling it a ‘Cuvée Spéciale’ is a bit of marketing – it’s just a normal table wine,” Caritoux admits in his thick Provençal accent from his farm in Flassans at the foot of Mont Ventoux. “The local cooperative made the wine in May 1984 after my victory, but they used my grapes from the previous harvest, which is why it says 1983 on the bottle.”
The faded label of the ‘Montagne Rouge’ shows Caritoux scaling his local mountain – although all is not what it seems. “They didn’t have a photo of me on Mont Ventoux so they used one from the time-trial in the Vuelta and superimposed it on a picture of the summit of Ventoux. In those days, they didn’t have specific skinsuits for the leader, so I’m just in my white team skinsuit, which they turned yellow for effect.”
Caritoux recalls being paid one franc per bottle by the cooperative. Given my bottle is numbered 23,782, the Frenchman made at least £2,200 from his little sideline. “Later, when I retired from cycling, they stopped paying me and gave me 100 bottles instead,” he adds. Although downsizing his farm in 2010 and opening a holiday home on the grounds, Caritoux still grows cherries and grapes, for which he has earned the nickname ‘Le Vigneron du Ventoux’ – the winemaker of Ventoux.
Located in Villes-sur-Auzon, south of Bédoin, the TerraVentoux cooperative cellar still produces bottles of the Cuvée Caritoux, which sells locally for €7.50 despite apparently losing its ‘Spéciale’ status. With its “round and fruity” palate and “fresh finish with spicy notes”, the red blend gets a respectable 3.6-star rating on the wine app Vivino, although the rosé has been described by one user as “thin, weak and entirely forgettable”. As to whether his maiden vintage is still palatable, Caritoux doesn’t mince his words: “I don’t think so – not anymore. I’ve had some of my wine from 15 years ago and it was just about okay, but this bottle is over 40 years old. It’ll be more like vinegar.”
Moser and Caritoux are not the only former cyclists to show that where legs once burned, grapes now ripen. French track star Thomas Boudat, who twice rode the Tour de France for Direct Énergies, now runs his family winery near Bordeaux; EF Education-EasyPost manager Jonathan Vaughters is an oenophile whose ex-wife Ashley is a revered sommelier and wine consultant; while Italian pro Matteo Sobrero will take over his own family business in the Langhe Hills once he hangs up his cycling shoes to stomp on grapes.
“Jeannie Longo has made some wine through the cooperative at Bédoin,” Caritoux adds. “There’s also a former rider from AG2R who’s become a winemaker in Savoie. But I can’t remember his name.” He’s thinking of Frenchman Axel Domont who, rather than becoming a directeur sportif after a sixth broken collarbone ended his career in 2020, opted for terroir over the team car. Now a respected viticulturist, Domont’s cuvées boast names such as Flamme Rouge, Kilomètre 0 and Tandem.
Cycling’s links with alcohol run deep. From old-school apéritif brands Carpano, Byrrh and Saint-Raphaël to modern-day wineries Nederburg and Mitchelton, many of the sport’s sponsors have heralded from the drinks industry – although the current fad for cherry juice and broccoli shots is a far cry from the brandy swigged by riders in the early 20th century. Back then, riders would look to alcohol to dull the pain or give them a boost. It was also considered safer to drink fermented goods than contaminated water from fountains or taps.
In his dreamy 1962 documentary, Vive le Tour, the director Louis Malle captures the craziness of the legendary ‘chasse à la canette’ drinking raids at roadside cafes. This was an era when Jacques Anquetil reigned supreme – a notorious bon vivant for whom “some champagne” was an integral part of his race preparation alongside, ideally, “a good pheasant and a woman”.
Another rider who unashamedly used booze as a crutch was Réne Vietto, who was possibly rather inebriated when he asked a doctor to cut off his septic toe during the 1947 Tour de France. Looking back on his career, the Frenchman once reflected: “I didn’t dope – my only tonics were champagne and red wine.” Which brings us nicely onto the Cuvée Réne Vietto – two near identical bottles of which are part of my collection.
Produced in Bédoin in 1988 after Vietto’s death, this 12.5% Côtes de Ventoux promises to “bring the legend of the ‘Roi Réne’ back to life”. A picture of said king looking rather like the actor Sean Penn – his brow creased and his demeanour slightly menacing – features on the tatty label, the reverse side of which pays tribute to the popular rider who famously ditched his own ambitions to lend team-mate Antonin Magne a spare wheel in the Pyrenees in his debut Tour in 1934.
“He had a heart of gold from which the bond of friendship could be forged. When his heart spoke to you intimately, it was for eternity,” the spiel on the label says of the climber who finished runner-up in the 1939 Tour despite 15 days in yellow. While both labels are identical, the bottles themselves reach slightly different heights while the capsules around the neck are mismatched. I reach out to my friend Chris Maybin, a wine and whisky expert I met while studying in Bordeaux a quarter of a century ago.
“One might have been stored better than the other,” he says. “This one has retained its colour but the other looks like it could almost be a rosé.” Chris explains about oxidation, which causes a flat taste and occurs after exposure to sunlight or air. (There’s a good reason why one of us writes about cycling and the other carved out a long career with Berry Brothers & Rudd.) “It will probably taste somewhere between weak port and warm sherry,” he says. “If you were with the Vietto family, you’d have to drink it through gritted teeth.”
While the lighter of the Vietto reds might taste like “over-diluted Ribena – watery, insipid and weak,” Chris is most terrified by the Moser Chardonnay, a white wine with little staying power that was made for drinking young. “Let’s just say it’s probably not a classic of our time,” he surmises despite admitting that 1986 was a strong year for Italian wine. “I’d be astonished if it was in any way pleasant. I probably wouldn’t even cook with it – unless nutty, slightly oxidised risottos are up your alley.”
The Moser Teroldego, however, could be a surprise. “A bit like the Ventoux, it’s a lovely, rich, spicy, bold wine which will have a better chance of having held up over the years,” Chris says, adding the caveat: “But anyone who tells you they’re an expert in 40-year-old Teroldego is probably lying.” Of the five different wines in the collection, it’s the Hinault Côtes de Bourg which catches his eye, closely followed by the Cuvée Caritoux.
“There’s no wine in the world more synonymous with cycling than Côtes de Ventoux. Since 2008 it’s been known as AOC Ventoux and it’s one of the best value wines of the Southern Rhône – albeit not known for long ageing. That said, ’83 was one of the great vintages of the last 50 years for the Rhône. But the Château Peychaud intrigues me most because the estate has a good reputation. The fruitiness might be replaced by secondary leathery, mushroomy flavours, but Côtes de Bourg is Merlot-led and can age extremely well.”
This stance is reflected in online wine retailers, where a single bottle of the ‘Adieux du Blaireau’ farewell wine is available for the same price as my entire noble lot. Unlike the Moser and Caritoux bottles, however, the Hinault and the Cuvée Vietto are tribute wines, putting them in a bracket of potential gimmickry. As the Badger cannot recall his collaboration with the Château Peychaud and Vietto is no longer alive, my attempts to uncork the provenance of both blends has been stymied by investigative phylloxera. Chris suggests I track down the vendor to see if they could shed (yet) more light on the bottles.
Auctioneers Vermot & Associés eventually put me in touch with the vendor of Lot 203. It turns out to be none other than Daniel Pautrat, the seasoned broadcaster and one of the French journalists who set up Eurosport in 1991. A veteran of a record 60 Tours de France – pushing the late Raymond Poulidor into yet another second place – Pautrat put the bottles up for sale after deciding to declutter his house in the Parisian suburb of Sèvres.
“I’m good friends with Francesco Moser and he gave me some bottles when I visited his winery,” Pautrat says. “It’s a good wine – especially the white, which I recall being quite nice.” The Caritoux rouge, he says, was another gift after the Frenchman won the Vuelta. “Back then, I was one of the small stars of French TV,” he reminisces. “I was the unofficial ambassador or godfather of the wine because it was me who fed Éric the time gaps during the decisive time-trial which helped him win the Vuelta.”
Pautrat became pally with Vietto when making a documentary with the retired rider in 1976. “I took him to the place where he handed Magne his bike in 1934,” he says. “Through him, I met many of his supporters – including René Bertrand, who I believe produced the wine in a village called Cairanne near Mont Ventoux. Funnily enough, I had a glass of Cairanne red for lunch. A more recent vintage, mind.”
As for the Badger bottle, Pautrat explains that it was the official wine of Hinault’s retirement party, which took place on 9th November 1986 after the five-time Tour winner bowed out in a cyclocross race near the Brittany town of Quessoy. He sends me some blurry snaps of the event programme that I have already seen after contacting Hinault’s old colleague, Loïc Le Bourhis, who had organised the party. An advert in the programme showcases the bottle, with its etched illustration of Hinault created from a photo that graced the cover of Miroir magazine during the 1984 Tour.
Underneath, the marketing bumf clarifies that this “magnificent bottle” of “a grand vin of Bordeaux” was created by the long-closed Maison du Vin at Hinault’s hometown of Saint-Brieuc. Pautrat now confirms to me that Hinault had no personal connection with the small wine-producing estate north of Bordeaux. “It was just a château that offered personalised bottles of wine to buyers. We were all given these limited-edition bottles at the party and there were other bottles for sale.” This explains Hinault’s apparent apathy towards his wine.
Before we finish, I press Pautrat on his storage of the collectables that now have pride of place in my kitchen.
“I kept them safely lying down in my cellar and away from the light,” he assures me. “But I had no intention of opening them. They were like trophies to which I have given a second life in this auction.” When I put my grand idea to Pautrat, he emits a little chuckle. “By all means, open the bottles – but I cannot guarantee the quality of the wine. I certainly wouldn’t recommend doing a big dinner party with them.”
The chances of any of the wines being remotely quaffable are, according to Chris, “low to middling at best”. He describes them as “lunch wines” that you might have swigged while taking a break from your weekend ride two decades ago. Master of Wine Peter Richards, of BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen fame, is even less generous. “They’re likely all to be shot to shit now,” says the man dubbed the David Attenborough of wine. “They’re not all table wines but neither are they from prestigious appellations. My hunch is that none would be delicious, one or two might be drinkable, but most likely they’re all pretty crap.”
The value of these six bottles is clearly sentimental rather than monetary or gustatory. For all their fancy labels and rustic charm, my six wines from Pautrat’s cellar carry a niche appeal that’s far from being an investment-grade opportunity. They’re the kind of blends that, back in the day, would have swirled around René Vietto’s bidon rather than filled the glasses of a soirée at the Château Anquetil. Their sediment-heavy, diluted contents offer nostalgia rather than flavour, the act of drinking driven by curiosity rather than the pursuit of pleasure. And yet it’s also only in prising out their crumbling corks, sampling the bouquet inside and (let’s be honest) spitting more than I swallow, that I will gain closure – even if, by doing so, I’ll be emptying the souls of these vintages of victory.
