Trail Name: Entre Vignes et Cadoles (au Depart des Riceys)
Trail Type:
A short-distance circuit; mostly well-maintained and with mostly hard surfaces (hard packed or paved), marking on the trail only occasional.
Length:
Total – 6.6 kilometers/4 miles
Convenient to: Troyes, France
Marking:
Yellow horizontal bars, or blue horizontal bars, sometimes together. (See the sign above.)
Continue reading Entre Vignes et Cadoles: Trail in a Nutshell
At my trailhead in a grass-covered valley, I bemoaned the fact that right at the start, I faced a somewhat steep incline. A toddler liberated from his stroller didn’t mind though, and seemed inclined to head into the woods and toddle up the trail behind me. Passing through deeply forested hillside, a couple of churches, then vineyards, I came to a narrow country road at the top of the hill. Up from an even steeper slope, came a man on a bicycle. He stopped at the top of the hill, as did I, to check the map. We got to chatting. He was a native of Bergamo, which I could see in the distance. He was an avid cyclist. He was 78. I was deeply impressed, and slightly shamed by my earlier whining about steep inclines. His hill was long and steep, coming up from the valley. I decided his great stamina must be due to a life-long exposure to the wines of Valcalepio.
What I Learned
There isn’t a Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) named Bergamo, in honor of one of northern Italy’s large cities, rather the wines produced locally in and around the city are known as the Valcalepio Denomination. The Valcalepio DOC wines are produced from grapes grown mostly north of Bergamo, east of the Adda River (coming out of Lake Como), to west from the Oglio River (coming from Lake Iseo). (This last incidentally, is also the boundary which meets up with the Franciacorta DOC.) This denomination only has about 800 hectares of land under vine. The wines from these vineyards only gained appellation status in 1976, so in addition to being relatively small, this appellation is also relatively new.
Trail Name: Strade del Vino; Full name: Escursione Lungo le Strade del Vino (Excursions along the Wine Routes)
Trail Type: mid-distance; maintained in most places, variable paved and unimproved surfaces, marking on the trail only occasional
Length:
Total – 11 kilometers/6.8 miles
Convenient to: Bergamo, Italy
Marking:
A red horizontal bar superimposed over a white one. See Comment below!!!
A Bocksbeutel is such a distinctive type of wine bottle that words fail me when it comes to describe it. So, I turned to the internet and found in Wiki: “a flattened ellipsoid.” (Try to remember that from geometry class.) Better yet, because “a picture is worth a thousand words,” I photographed a bottle.
What I Learned:
There are three distinct wine districts in the Franconian Wine Region: The Mainviereck, the Maindreieck and the Steigerwald. Vineyards here can face more challenges than elsewhere in the region. While the first two districts follow along the Main River, the Steigerwald wine district does not. This means that the climate-moderating effects of a river do not apply. Additionally, the highest vineyards in the Franconian wine region lie in this district, some at almost 400 meters above sea level. Therefore, the elevation, as well as the distance from the Main River means that spring weather effects can come later, and fall weather effects can come earlier, and have more impact, than elsewhere in this wine region.
Trail Name: Talauen-Radweg, T-6; – (See also Bocksbeuteltour AKA Bocksbeutelrunde below)
Trail Type: Middle distance; well-maintained and almost exclusively paved, marking on the trail good
Length:
Total – 26 kilometers/16 miles
Convenient to: Neustadt (Aisch) (about 35 miles northwest of Nuremberg), Bad Windsheim, Germany
Marking:
