Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Tour de France 2024 Stage 16: Gruissan to Nimes


Where are we?  In the Aude and the Gard

Gruissan: The town website has a lot of appealing suggestions. I'm interested in the salt works. Because, of course I am.  They tell me that: Located very close to the old village of Gruissan, the saltworks of Saint Martin Island is bordered by the Mediterranean to the east and the Ayrolle pond to the south. Here, as throughout the Aude coast, culture has a long history.
In fact, for more than 100 years before Christ, Gruissan was already talking about its salt production and the salt trade was very important during the Roman era. On this site, the exploitation of saltworks in its current form began in 1911, covering an area of ​​approximately 350 hectares, it supported around thirty families in the 1970s.
The ecomuseum invites you to go back in time, dedicated to the cultivation of salt and its environment, it is complemented by a winegrower's area dedicated solely to Aude viticulture. Guided tours are offered to you to learn everything about salt production, make interesting ornithological and botanical observations and visit our oyster parks.
See more here: https://www.gruissan-mediterranee.com/en/Gruissan-cultural-site/the-salt-of-lile-saint-martin/

Le Tour specialties: eel bourride, Mediterranean fish and seafood, Aude wines (La Clape, Minervois, Corbières). Oysters from Gruissan and Leucate.

Nimes:  Let's visit the arena: It is considered the best-preserved Roman amphitheatre in the world. Built in the first century, it was used in the Middle Ages as a fortified village.
The Arena of Nimes fully illustrate the degree of expertise reached by Roman engineers to conceive and build such complex buildings. It is indeed perfectly symmetrical. Of oval shape, it measures 133 metres in length and 101 in width with a track of 68 by 38 metres. It is also 21 metres in height, with two floors of 60 arcades and an attic. At the top, stones were equipped with masts supporting a huge velum protecting the crowds from the sun and rain. Originally, all the arcades or the first floor were open for a better flow of the public.Today, the arena is the centrepiece of the Nimes ferias, with bullfights attriacting thousands of aficionados.
 
Le Tour specialties: brandade de Nimes, Villaret croquants (dry cakes), picholine (AOC green olive), Nimes olive oil (AOC), Nimes pâtés, gariguettes (strawberries), Costières de Nimes (AOC wine). Jeans originate from Nimes (Denim).

Christian Prudhomme says:  The sprinters may be heavily tipped for success when the race heads away from the coast near Narbonne, and maybe even when the riders pass over the Pic Saint-Loup. But the Mistral can blow fiercely at this time of year and could well upset the plans of the sprinters if those teams that feel at home when it’s windy end up scattering the peloton.


The stage: A sprint stage and quite possibly the last one of this year's Tour! One feels the sprinters deserve it after the last mountain stage. Indeed, the peloton stayed mainly together, with only one likely doomed attacked many kms into the stage.  
Eventually, he would be caught.
As they came in, crash Girmay! 
Philipsen with ease.



The wine: Domaine Faillenc Sainte-Marie Rose des Glaceries 2022
From the importer: Remains of a Roman winery have been found at the site of the Domaine Faillenc Sainte-Marie, a testament to the ancient tradition of winegrowing at that location. The domaine, in its present form, was founded during the reign of Louis XIV by an officer returning from service on the Indian subcontinent. Situated just outside of the tiny village of Douzens a mere 12 kilometers east of the ancient walled city of Carcassonne, Faillenc Sainte-Marie has recovered its past allure under the careful guidance of the energetic Gibert family and now produces an exciting range of red, white, and rose wines.


The food:  Nimes brandade
From Le Tour: Brandade is a Nimes speciality made with cod or, more precisely, hake, which was the name given to salted and dried hake, a fish caught in the Mediterranean, before becoming the local name for cod. The story goes that a woman from Nimes came up with the idea of grinding the cod meat in a stone mortar, diluting it and mixing it with the fragrant oil from the surrounding garrigues. This new dish was called brandade, from the word brandado, which means "stirred" in Provençal. Brandade was first mentioned in 1788, in the Encyclopédie méthodique. It states that the hake are cut into pieces and placed in a frying pan with finely chopped garlic. Oil is added little by little, and "by force of arms should bind with the garlic paste and the fish". It would be an exaggeration to speak of Nimes as the birthplace of brandade... though! Brandade was born from the combination of three ingredients that could only be found in Nimes: sea salt harvested fifty kilometres away, local hake later replaced by cod, and olive oil, which is abundant here. It also owes its success to the social structure of this industrious town from the 17th to the 19th century when the recipe was popularised.

Here's a recipe from a 2019 Tour visit: https://winebookgirl.blogspot.com/2019/07/wine-food-of-le-tour-2019-stage-16.html

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