You are listening to Kilometre Zero by the Cycling Podcast, Power by Super Sapiens, Energy Management for Community that Leads and Coaches.

While we're in the week three of the Tour de France and by that time we're all in the mood for a little diversion, aren't we?

We want to go off the beaten track and see what else France has to offer and on Friday evening, François took us on a little journey.

To meet somebody completely unconnected with the race, but what a fascinating character he was, Robert Eden, the great nephew of Anthony Eden, former British Prime Minister, who is now a winemaker in France.

We went to meet him and he was a force of nature.

How did you come across him, François?

By chance, during the pandemic, I was actually in the first lockdown. I didn't know about you guys, but I did lots of sports, but I did lots of boozing as well.

I had to regain weight after losing it by running or riding my stand bike. I ordered wine bottles from the internet.

Among the boxes that came, there was one bottle of Chateau Maris in Minervoir. That's the region we were last week, near Carcassonne.

It was absolutely outstanding. I ordered more, I went to the website and discovered the whole word of the wine making.

The more wines I ordered from Chateau Maris, whether red, rosé, or white, the better they were.

I was all organic. I sensed there was a different approach to wine making. I got in touch with the wine makers and the people working there.

It was a very small village of Minervoir and I realized there was a real character and it was good wine, good music.

That's what I wanted to discover. I saw that we were going to the Tour de Flanners, which means going off the track of cycling to discover other things about France.

I thought it was impossible to miss. It was feeling Minervoir only about 20km away from Carcassonne. It was a good chance to see what this guy is doing, to taste his wine, to eat his food because he's got a little place called Le Grand Café Occitant,

which is a gorgeous little place, like the real France, like you expected. A little square beneath the trees and really brilliant food.

For you guys, listeners of the podcast, I was thinking that for a Frenchman to claim that Britain is teaching the French, the frogs out to make wine was actually something you should hear about because really this man, regardless of his nationality, makes the best of the French landscape and vines.

I've never heard before of somebody drinking wine in order to put on weight after losing it through exercise. That's a new one on me.

But, Francois, I don't know what I expected when you took us to meet Robert Eden, but it wasn't who we met. Let's hear from him now.

My name is Robert Eden and I was born in England and I am here talking to you from the south of France where we have a vineyard and we have several vineyards which produce organic and biodynamic grapes, which make organic and biodynamic wine.

I got into that because I had a little mishap around about 18 years old of brewing beer with home brew kits.

I wasn't allowed to sell the beer to the older boys in the school and I did and he got sick and they got sick rather than they complained to make sure that Eden was sold and the bad beer and I got kicked out of school.

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