KEEPING THE BEER FLOWING
The Vésubie Valley is a geographical anomaly. If you start drawing straight lines across the map you might be fooled into thinking it is quite close to Nice. You would be wrong. Somehow the valleys and mountains twist and turn to make the route in and out long and torturous. Each year riders make the pilgrimage there for the Trans-Vésubienne, a hellishly tough, big-mountain XC race that links the high peaks of the Vésubie to the beach below.
My main memory of that race, beyond the suffering, is always the cold beer at the end. You see, it’s not just any beer. It is called Biere du Comté. Brewed in Saint Martin, the finish line for the prologue, it takes its unique flavour from the water running down off the mountains. Yet it is that same water that brought disaster to the brewery and the community around it last year.
On 2 October, 2020, Master brewer Laurent Fredj went to
