Luis Ocaña, Spanish in France and French in Spain, called home a farm between Nogaro, which yesterday hosted the end of a Tour stage for the first time, and Caupenne d’Armagnac. Barely two kilometers from the circuit that made it to the finish line, is the Domaine de Miselle, 30 hectares of vineyards and stables, dedicated since the 19th century to the production of wines. The cyclist had just won the 1973 Tour de France -14 years after Bahamontes, now it is 50 years since the event and the organization wanted to remember it- when he decided to buy the property and land to revitalize production.
A few strips of flags hang these days from the patio that separates the house from the building of the cellars. They are yellow, green, white and with red dots, like the Tour jerseys. Tino, a gray dog, barks at unexpected visitors.
“The house is the same as when Ocaña lived. It was only fixed a little by the passing of the years”, explains to La Vanguardia, Nicolás Chevalier. His father bought the farm in 1998 from the champion’s family. Julien, the eldest son, is dedicated to the wine part of the business while Nicolás, the youngest son, takes care of the horses.
The residence has two floors and four rooms. The façade has an ocher color, more or less like the yellow jersey would look like, stained by mud and rain, the day he fell down the Menté pass, when he had to abandon the 1971 Tour, which he had in the pocket. “The pool was already there too,” says Nicolás. What he doesn’t know is that that pool was built by Ocaña himself with his own hands, including an ugly cut on his hand. The cyclist, who would now be 78 years old, would not have believed a robotic lawnmower with an obstacle detector doing the job of mowing the garden.
With a quixotic personality and a lover of impossible undertakings –just because someone said it was impossible, for him it was already worth trying, like his fight with Eddy Merckx-, Ocaña insisted on making the Armagnac, a brandy, business profitable. He had no luck. As much as Merckx himself, his great rival, with whom he made peace at the end of their careers, helped him by promoting the drink in Belgium.
Depressed, with health, love and money problems after several bad harvests, he shot himself on the porch of the winery and killed himself on May 19, 1994.
Ocaña’s footprint is still present in the memory of the Miselle estate. Hanging from one of the walls you can see a photo of the Spaniard riding a Renault 80 tractor, the property recently acquired. Josiane, his widow, now lives in Pau. But this weekend she went to Caupenne d’Armagnac to attend the act in which the town hall baptized one of its rooms with the name of the cyclist. Afterwards, 400 guests attended a tasting of the Chevallier family’s Gascon wines at the Domaine de la Miselle and toasted the champion legend, fifty years after his great triumph.