It was while taking a leak in the rest room of the Blue Frog Cantina in Fairfield, Atlanta, that Bill Leigon spotted the charming Belle Epoque poster of a winged bicycle with a nubile nymph clutching its handlebars. Mr. Leigon, president of California’s Hahn Estates winery in Monterey, took an instant fancy to the late 19th century poster created for the Montmartre-based French bicycle manufacturer, Fernand Clément et Cie, by Frenchman G. Massias. As any astute brand manager might, he turned it into a wine label and called the wine Cycles Gladiator. The brand now sells 200,000 cases.

The Offending Poster

Although it had been selling for three years in Alabama without complaint, last month its Beverage Control Board deemed the label ‘immodest’ and banned Cycles Gladiator. Americans have been known to be prudish about wine labels portraying scantily glad young women. The depiction of a young girl on the label of a 1973 Château Mouton Rothschild by French artist Balthus was deemed so provocative by the then Bureau of Alcohol Firearms and Tobacco that the offending image had to be removed at great cost to Baron Philippe de Rothschild.

The prudes of the Alabama Beverage Control Board rather missed the point. The poster was not about the nymph but the bicycle. The last decade of the 19th century saw an explosion of interest in the bicycle thanks to the invention of the pneumatic tyre by John Dunlop in 1888. Ironically, as Bill Bryson points out in Made in America, one of the reasons for cycling’s popularity was that it was one of the few exhilarating enjoyments permitted to women, although ‘some authorities warned that it might be too exhilarating’. According to Bryson, the Georgia Journals of Medicine and Surgery thought cycling unsuitable for females because the movements of the legs and the pressure on the pelvis of the saddle were bound to arouse ‘feelings hitherto unrealized by the young maiden’.

Warning label: this may corrupt

All publicity, as they say, is good publicity and Bill Leigon (who also created the even more successful Rex Goliath label), says: ‘To say that this wine label is pornographic is ridiculous. It’s a beautiful piece of art that captures the grace and uninhibited beauty of our hillside vineyards’. In fact while Hahn Estates in Monterey is making some excellent wines, Cycles Gladiator comes mainly from valley floor Monterey fruit rather than the hillside vineyards that make Hahn’s better wines. Hahn makes a perfectly drinkable Cycles pinot grigio, chardonnay, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, but my favourite wine in the Cycles range is the 2008 Cycles Gladiator Pinot Noir, £7.99, Co-op, a well-made red wine with fresh fragrance and juicy, ripe strawberry fruitiness.

Pinot noir is one of California’s increasingly strong suits, although quality at the right price can be hard to come by. Within that category I would include the cherry-raspberry-scented, smooth-textured and subtly oaked 2006 La Crema Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, £16.99, Waitrose, and Jim Clendenen’s silky, enticingly raspberryish 2007 Au Bon Climat Santa Maria Pinot Noir, £19.00, Berry Bros & Rudd (0800 280 2440). For the class of California pinot noir that can compete with top red burgundy, you do have to pay more, viz. Littorai’s red berry fruit flavoured, elegant 2006 Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, £34.43, Armit (020 7908 0660), or the succulently pure and complex, mulberryish 2006 Flowers Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir, around £54.99, Philglas and Swiggot (020 7924 4494), Handford (020 7589 6113). Sex in a bottle you might say. Anthonyrosewine.com.

Something For the Weekend

Under a Fiver

2008 Asda Argentinian Torrontés.

Like a cross between a scented Alsace gewürztraminer and a grapey Muscat, this fresh and fragrant Argentinian dry white from value merchants Trivento contains such a heady perfume and juicy, crushed bunch-of-grapes fruit that it’s moreishly impossible to resist. £4.30, Asda

Under a Tenner

2004 Bay of Fires Tigress Chardonnay, Tasmania

A one-off ‘deal’, this classic, mature Tasmanian cool climate chardonnay from Hardy’s shows tropical pineapple and mango flavours mingling with toasty oak, its grapefruit zesty fruit still fresh after all these years. £5.99, Majestic Wine Warehouses.

Splash Out

2007 Jean Marc Pillot Chassagne Montrachet

At this level of class and complexity, the chardonnay grape is transformed from mere grape into a white burgundy whose subtle oak and richly textured, full-flavoured fruit opens a window onto the vineyard whence it came. £29, Waitrose.

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