Tasmania: Assos and Domaine De L'Arlot

OK, call me a name dropper but both of the above were better than today's ride. I had hoped for a big weekend of riding, but rain yesterday and Mother's Day today restricted things to 57 km with Dad's Army this morning - no hills, no intervals, just a wet road and a bucket and sponge job on the weapon afterwards. At least the coffee and the chat were enjoyable.

Assos

I've always got by with bike kit and used a mixture of mountain bike gear, bush-walking gloves, beanies and whatever else that came to hand with potential for maintaining warmth and dryness. Assos have a reputation for being the Armani of road bike gear so, when it came to buying a 'proper' bike top, why not get a good one?

They have a great marketing spin with about seven sets of gear, each one for a narrow temperature range. Not content with the four seasons they have Hot Summer, Early Winter, Winter Plus and so on. At one extreme you wouldn't look out of place on the beach at St Tropez and you could probably wear the other extreme for ice climbing. Each set of gear also has a multitude of components but we'll not go there. Anyway, they sucked me right in and I bought an Early Winter jacket and a Spring jacket thinking that, with various T shirts and old orienteering tops underneath, they would do me quite nicely.

Had to laugh. The winter jacket is called an iJ.ha.Bu5. Each letter and digit is coded for something - these boys are even more anal than I am. Glad I bought it online as I couldn't really contemplate going into my local bike shop and asking for an iP...er...QR whatsit 6. Why couldn't they just call it the Eiger? But...wore it for the first time this morning and very comfortable it was, as promised, in exactly the target temperature range of 3 to 12 degrees.

Wine

Took my lady out for lunch after the ride, mindful that a riding buddy had recommended a recent arrival in his restaurant of 2011 Domaine De L'Arlot 'Les Petits Plets'. And what a cracking wine it turned out to be. Red Burgundy is called Pinot Noir here in Tasmania but the only similarities with this one were the colour of the wine and the name of the grape. Don't get me wrong, Tassie makes an excellent New World pinot but this was something else. Despite only being a village wine (three steps down the quality ladder from a grand cru) it was pretty well all you could ask for. Everything about it was subtle. The nose was sweet but with that engaging French funkiness of sexy bed sheets. While not at all similar, those hard to define qualities make me think of Anthony Burgess' description of the durian fruit as being like eating raspberry blancmange in the lavatory. And the texture; one minute is was all velvet glove and the next iron fist. Lovely! And there's still half-a-bottle left to go with dinner this evening.