This final Tour de France stage recap covers the last stage of the 2025 Tour de France. It also includes my top 3 dishes and top 3 stages from this year’s Tour. And, to wrap it all up I make my final dish for this year’s Tour: Julia Child’s Coq au Vin.
Stage Recap
Traditionally, the final stage of a grand tour is cermonial. At the beginning of the stage teams will take photos on their bikes, drink champagne, and have an easy ride into the final finishing circuit where sprinters can contend for a final stage win. At the Giro, they even had a visit from the new Pope!
This year, the Tour changed things up slightly, and while there were photos there certainly wasn’t any champagne. That’s because organizers took inspiration from the Olympic road race route from the 2024 Olympics in Paris and added a challenging short, but steep, climb up Montmarte. As a result, the stage wasn’t for the sprinters. And in fact, we saw none other than Yellow jersey winner, Tadej Pogacar fighting for the win up Montmarte as rain poured down in Paris.
It was a small group of riders that were contending for the stage, but in the end it was Wout van Aert, from Visma Lease-a-Bike that mounted a strong attack on the final climb, managing to distance Pogacar and claim the final stage win of this year’s Tour de France.
At the end of the Tour Pogačar had a solid command of the yellow jersey and the King of the Mountains jersey. Jonathan Milan wins the Green Jersey and Florian Lipowitz wins the white jersey.
Top Stages and Dishes
This was an interesting Tour. We waited so long for the mountains and by the time we got there it felt like the GC fight was pretty much wrapped up within a day. However, this was certainly an action-packed Tour de France. Below are the three stages that I’ll be remembering for a while.
Top Stages
- Stage 16: Mont Ventoux. Breakaway Fights and GC Action
- Stage 10: First Mountains + Bastille Day. Ben Healy gets Yellow!
- Stage 21: Who would have thought the Montmartre climb would see so much action (or maybe just recency bias.)
Top Dishes
I definitely struggled a bit more to get into the regional french cooking than I did Italian gastronomy for the Giro. However, I would say the quality of each of the dishes I made for the Tour de France was higher than it was for the Giro, probably because I gave myself much more time to plan and prepare each dish. Here are my top 3 favorites but honestly everything I made was something I would make again!
- Flemish Beef Stew – Meaty and Delicious
- Cassoulet – Homey stew that could feed an army
- Tarte au Citron – Lemon and Lime Pies are superior
Final Dish: Coq au Vin
I thought Coq au Vin might be the most typical french dish I could make and so saving it for Paris seemed great. And a Julia Child recipe is usually a safe bet. So that’s what I saved for my final dish. This is another one of those great to make in advance dishes. And I LOVE chicken that is cooked in red wine. I paired it with potatoes (as Julie suggests) and a young red burgundy (also heeding Julia’s advice.) It’s cooked with mushrooms and pearl onions to pack in the flavor.
It was delicious! Definitely worth the time and I look forward to having leftovers to work on throughout the week.
Reflections
Honestly the end of the Tour always feels very bittersweet. It feels like ages ago that it started, so I’m sure the riders are all exhausted. Yet, it’s the climax of the cycling season. Every team and rider works up to the Tour. So it is definitely a little sad to be heading towards the end of the cycling season.
However, it is not over! There is still one more week of French cycling to watch with the Tour de France Femmes. The women’s Tour is going to feature some of the same epic climbs the men conquered (like Col de la Madeleine) and the GC fight is sure to be razor thin if last year’s TDF Femmes was any indication. And, of course there is still la Vuelta a Espana to come. I will be covering that as well for our final culinary and cycling tour of the season. Thanks so much for reading and hasta luego!