uncorked
Spare a sympathetic thought for me this morning, please. If all has gone according to plan, I'm awkwardly straddling a new Trek racing bike surrounded by 35,000 athletic cyclists preparing to race 109km around South Africa's Table Mountain. The race should be stunning as it ducks and bobs through some of the world's most beautiful wine regions - Constantia, Franschhoek and Stellenbosch - that is if you dare glance up.
It seems wherever there's a wine region, there's a cycling tour: Sonoma, Napa, Tasmania, Victoria, Burgundy and Alsace to name a few. Perhaps vintners prefer to keep visitors wobbling on a pair of wheels instead of wobbling behind the wheel.
Bordeaux is easy to cycle through because most of the famed 'left-bank' vineyards are as flat as a pancake, if a touch dull. Thrill seekers might prefer the narrow roads threaded through Bordeaux's hillier but more picturesque right-bank regions, Pomerol and medieval Saint-Emilion.
For expansive wind-swept fields and rolling plains of wildflowers mixed with calf-wrenching climbs ask Backroads to guide your bike through Alentejo, Portugal.
The words 'New York' and 'wine' are more likely to invoke visions of white-cloaked tables in Manhattan than vineyards but New York is the third largest US grape-growing region, with vineyards clustered on Long Island, along the Hudson River and in upstate New York's increasingly chic Finger Lakes region, just above Cornell University. Neat rows of vines are tucked among emerald hills, dairy farms and orchards lining slim glacially formed finger-shaped lakes with intriguing native-American names such as Seneca, Keuka and Cayuga. Light traffic and quiet towns almost frozen in time provide excellent cycling opportunities. Classic Adventures (www. classicadventures.com) offers outings of up to six days, weaving through about 100 wineries, the largest concentration in the US outside of Napa Valley.
If the above routes aren't sufficiently arduous, then, of course, there's always today's race in Cape Town - but there'll be no stopping to taste wine.
