Bike to Care Bordeaux - Sommelier Scholarship
Daniel Johnnes
May 10, 2023
Almost two years ago my friend Pierre-Henry Gagey of Maison Louis Jadot called me to tell me about a fundraising initiative he was hoping to launch and asked for my support. Before knowing more about it, knowing Pierre-Henry, I gave him my unconditional support.
The idea was to create a collaborative event with the goal of raising funds “for associations in the restaurant and hospitality sectors that care for people in difficulty, encourage new vocations and support the training of upcoming talent”. It was to be a 200km bike tour through Burgundy over two days.
The Jadot team was to invite ten teams from five countries, and each country would have a chef team and a sommelier team. The five countries were France, UK, USA, Denmark and Canada.
Excited by this idea, I set out to assemble my team with the goal of raising money for The Roots Fund; an organization that opens doors to people of color in or wishing to enter the wine business. La Paulee has supported this non-profit for 3 years now through our festivals and we saw this as another opportunity to mentor and diversify our community of sommeliers and wine professionals.
I called upon some of my closest friends and most influential sommeliers in America who also happened to be bikers. They were Larry Stone, Bobby Stuckey, Andre Mack, Richard Betts, Andy Chabot, and from La Paulee, Jaime Dutton and Edouard Bourgeois.
We rode the 200km under beautiful sunny skies in the Cote de Beaune and the Cote de Nuits and made new friendships, all in the spirit of a good cause.
It was so successful that Pierre-Henry and the Jadot team decided to do it again, this time n Bordeaux with close Chateau owner friends.
We have just spent 3 wonderful days in Bordeaux biking, meeting new people, riding for a mission and rediscovering Bordeaux.
Bordeaux is a beautiful city with a long history as a center of the wine trade. It is also as a region of France that produces the greatest volume of AOC wine in the country as well as some of the most spectacular and long lived wines on the planet.
My team was virtually the same as last year yet we were riding for Sommelier Scholarship, a non-profit that we founded two years ago with a mission that is closely aligned with that of Bike to Care.
Unfortunately, the weather was not as inviting and comfortable as last year but that had no effect on the spirit and the successful results of our fundraising efforts.
The core group of our host chateaux were Veronique Sanders of Chateau Haut Bailly, her husband Alexandre van Beek of Chateau Giscours and Jean-Charles Caze of Chateau Lynch Bages. We were treated like kings visiting the most iconic chateaux along our routes - Lynch Bages, Lafite Rothschild, Haut Bailly, Branaire Ducru, Chateau de Cerons and Chateau d’Yquem.
This was a journey to long remember and gave us motivation to raise even more for the next edition to take place back in Burgundy in the spring of 2024.
For all interested in supporting Bike to Care and our Sommelier Scholarship, visit our website at sommelierscholarship.org or biketocare.org .
