The wines - let’s start with them
After all, they're the reason we’re touring Alsace this month, before we begin cruising. The wine route is one of the most popular and attractive ways to explore the traditional villages of the Alsace region, and to learn more about the wines it produces.
 |
| The Alsace Wine Route |
The route is nearly 180 km long. Following the foothills of the Vosges mountains, it traces
a line from north to south, crossing the southern half of the Bas-Rhin and the northern half of the Haut-Rhin departments. Along the route there are about 50 wines classified 'grand cru’.
What could be confusing — or confused, about Alsace wines?
Small, blonde-grey hair, creamy skin, the woman behind the counter at Charles Baur, Eguisheim, recites the options in a practised, light voice: “In whites, 90% of the Alsace production, we have seven varieties: Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Tokay-Pinot Gris, Sylvaner, Muscat, Pinot Blanc, and Chasselas. And let’s not forget the crémant — it's like Champagne — from mixed grapes. But there’s only one red grape here — Pinot noir, for red wine and rosé”.
During the 1950s Pierre Galet identified something like 9,600 grape types, making up 99% of the world’s grapes, yet only twenty varieties account for around 87% of of the whole of France’s viticulture. And seven are right here in Alsace — and that’s just the whites... Most wine regions are content with two or three.
All unknowing, we are on to something, in asking about the various varieties’ sweetness. Sue Style, a writer on the food and wine of the region where she lives, offers her summary on the wines: "Alsace offers a dazzling range of styles from crisp and light to rich, smoky and spicy, and from very dry to sweet. Wines are characterised by their opulence and richness, and they are ideal partners for food". Then she goes on to note that “within Alsace and from outside, a ‘Great Sugar Debate’ is raging – fuelled by the perception that all Alsace whites, even those that are not late harvested or botrytized, are getting steadily sweeter” (http://suestyle.com/). The hotter the summer, the higher the level of sugar...
Madame Baur is Charles' wife and partner in their wine business, from vineyard to cellar door. We feel our Alsace wine education is off to a promising start; now it’s time to sample… Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, statesman and gourmet, 1754-1838, described the steps of wine tasting: “First, one takes the glass in the hollow of the hand, to warm it, then one swirls it with a circular motion, so that the alcohol may release its scent. Then one raises the glass to one’s nose and gently breathes in. Then one places the glass back down and talks about it”. He seems to have forgotten something… We work our way through all seven of the white varieties, and since there’s nowhere to tip the remainder after tasting, we politely finish off each generous glass Madame pours… But wait! All the wines come in a distinctive flûte, a tall, narrow bottle that resembles the slender green-glass bottles of the German Mosel-Saar-Ruwer… Yet this is France? Confusing...
Just as well we’re staying close by; I’d hate to be driving anywhere. Eguisheim, where grapes have been grown since Roman times, becomes the epicentre of our wine sampling; there are caves down every street and on every corner, it seems. Several of them are owned by various Baurs.
Setting aside the option to track down tastings in the vineyards themselves, no doubt a serious mistake, we discover that we especially enjoy the Pinot Gris, Pinot Blancs and Rieslings, so we stock up on these for the barge. Who couldn’t agree with Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), poet and essayist: “If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a breakdown in health and intellect, a void much more dreadful than all the excesses and deviations for which wine is thought to be responsible”.
The towns and villages: confusing?
Just for starters, there’s nothing very French about the name ‘Eguisheim’. Yet here it is, in Alsace… We spend four nights in the town, in our very own half-timbered cottage, part of an Abbey complex dating from 1262. I can’t believe our luck when our host, a tall older woman with whom I converse in shaky French — she knows no English — leads me to it and shows me around.
 |
| R enjoys the comforts of our cottage |
Crowding against a 13C castle, Eguisheim is an ancient place that’s hardly changed since the 16C. The Grand’Rue is lined with the most imposing houses bearing coats of arms.
 |
| The watch-path walk starts at this small house |
A narrow alley following the former watch path circles the edge of the old town, the rest is built inward from it in concentric circles. Half-timbered houses with balconies and oriels (projecting bay windows) lean against each other on both sides of the streets. Vineyards push in from the nearby slopes.
Villages like Eguisheim are scattered throughout the Alsace landscape. They appear suddenly in dips among the hills, or climb the Vosges’ lower slopes among the vines, often with the square tower of a decaying castle on the peaks above — Alsace has more castles than anywhere else in Europe.
Each toy train set village — neat, small houses and terracotta, steep-pitched roofs — clusters around a tall-steepled church that dominates the horizon...
I sit sketching the small chateau and chapel—the first residence dates from the 8th C — above Eguisheim's compact main square. It’s pleasant here. Flowers are all around — I’m perched on the edge of a stone trough- turned planter box — and the yeastiness of fresh-baked bread mingled with the sweet tang of fruit tarts floats from the boulangerie over the way. I’ll buy a baguette for lunch… thoughts of the crispy, rough crust and the soft inside distract me for a moment. Knots of tourists eddy around, murmuring to each other — I hear mostly French and German. One or two peer over my shoulder to see what I’m doing; one woman, right in my face, takes my photograph…
 |
| The inscription shows the initials of the couple who owned the house and when it was built |
An excursion into the past
The buildings in Eguisheim have evolved over the centuries. Up until the 16th, they were whitewashed with lime, the timbers protected with soot or iron oxide. Windows were enlarged in the 17th C, and the facades embellished with ornate carvings on dark-timbered lintels, window, and door-frames: faces peering; leering; full-length, robed or armoured figures in corner niches. Pastel coloured frontages indicated the wealthiest owners. During the 19th and 20th centuries, it became fashionable to cover the entire outside with cement. More recently, original timbers are being restored to view. Painting the walls between the timbers is the latest innovation, in rich, intense colours: mustard yellows through to pumpkin, deep rose-pinks to orange-reds, cream, peach, strawberry-red, sky blue. Alsace architecture is now highly valued and is a key attraction.
 |
A fifties house and its scullery |
In the 1960s, though, a group of students and professors feared the loss of regional heritage and decided to take action. The outcome is the Écomusée D’Alsace, an open-air museum. Old houses from the 15C to 19C, due to be demolished, were located all over Alsace, then carefully taken apart and rebuilt on the 25ha site. Some 70 timber-framed houses with their courtyards and gardens, grouped according to their original area, illustrate the evolution of building techniques and give an insight into social life in traditional villages.
Other buildings house exhibitions, old machinery, and several workshops - a potter’s, a wheelwright, and so on - demonstrate traditional techniques. Cowsheds and stables shelter domestic animals. The museum's many activities and demonstrations include traditional farming methods.
Unfortunately for us, on the day we choose to go to the museum it rains steadily, there’s even hail, and it’s freezing cold: 7-13C. Our exploration of the site with its buildings nestled among trees, flowers and a waterway is drastically curtailed. We may return some day...
Ungersheim… that’s where the museum is located… nothing too French about that name or the myriad others in Alsace ending in ’heim’: Beblenheim, Kientzheim, Bergheim are just a few, not to mention place names ending in wihr, berg, statt, bach, willer...… It’s confusing…
Eguisheim is seven kilometres from Colmar, where we spend our first two nights. The designated capital of the wine-growing region, Colmar’s name, at least, is thoroughly French, deriving from a Frankish word for ‘dove’ that dates from Charlemagne’s time.
 |
| An example of Colmar street adornment: an ancient vine...No, not R! |
 |
| Look delicious, don't they? They're soap! |
 |
| We see these odd arrangements on a number of buildings |
You can definitely
eat these. Macarons are a Colmar tradition.
Colmar is the birthplace of several famous artists, including Martin Schongauer (1445-91) and August Bartholdi (1834-1904), best remembered for the Statue of Liberty. We see examples of Schongauer and his school’s work in the chapel section of the Musée D’Unterlinden (the major part is closed for renovation). The Schongauer paintings are vivid in both colours and imagination.
There are also wonderful examples of medieval wood carving.
 |
| Pigs were highly prized in medieval Colmar |
The museum is home to the affecting Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by Matthias Grünewald at the beginning of the 16C. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isenheim_Altarpiece
At the end of the street, we take a look at an informative museum dedicated to La Poste.
This huge covered wagon was used to deliver
mail in the early19th C.
 |
| Outside Riquewihr's walls. |
Bergheim is another lovely wine-growing village. At the end of every alley we see rows of vines, once we’re through the 14C fortified gate.
It's shaded by an old lime tree believed to date back to 1300. The northern section of the medieval wall which protected Bergheim from the Burgundians in 1470 still stands, with three of its original round towers. There’s a path that we stroll along, following the entire wall route, with views of the green countryside on one side and people’s backyards on the other — almost always there’s a vegetable garden.
Flowers cascade from every available surface in the small market square, also home to the tiniest half-timbered house we’ve seen.
Molsheim is our last Alsace stop as we head north and west toToul and our barge.
And what about the food?
In Alsace, where the food and wines seem made for each other, you can go into a Weinstube, with carved barrels and dark mahogany seats, as well as the usual café. In homes and restaurants classical regional dishes include escargots, coq au Riesling, and foie gras — but equally popular are such hearty favourites as bäckeofe, a tasty, rib-sticking stew of meat that's marinated for several days, and cooked with lots of potatoes.
 |
| Hearty bäckeofe |
Then there's choucroute.
Sue Style describes choucroute as "the classic dish of Alsace: aromatic salted cabbage, very similar to the German sauerkraut, but more refined with the addition of juniper berries and often cooked in goose fat. Traditionally garnished with ... smoked pork, ham and different sausages, a Sylvaner or ... Riesling would be good with this dish... When a main dish is described as à l'alsacienne it will be accompanied by choucroute".
 |
| Classic choucroute |
There’s Choucroute aux Poissons, described by Style as having "the meat ... replaced by an assortment of fish (salmon, monkfish, pike-perch) - just the dish for a fine Riesling". Another dish featuring only freshwater fish is "matelote, a stew cooked in and best served with Riesling".
 |
| White asparagus with salmon |
White asparagus is extensively grown in Alsace's sandy soils. Right through its spring season, some restaurants focus almost exclusively on the vegetable. They serve it in many ways, but "a classic form is in huge steaming piles with cured and cooked ham and three sauces (vinaigrette, mayonnaise and hollandaise). Muscat is the classic match".
 |
| R tries flammekueche |
Then there’s Tarte à l’Oignon, a creamy mix of onions, eggs and sometimes bacon in a light pastry, "ideal with a Pinot Blanc or Sylvaner". And Flammekueche/Tarte Flambée (note the dual name). This is Alsace’s version of pizza: "wafer-thin bread dough topped with a mixture of onion, cream and bacon, baked till bubbling hot, served on a wooden board and eaten with the fingers. Good with a Pinot Blanc".
We try all these dishes, in one or other of the towns we visit. None disappoints.
And finally there’s Munster. We become pilgrims in search of this legendary product, a soft, brine-washed cows' milk cheese with its own Appellation Contrôlée. It has to be made according to the method the Benedictine monks developed in the 7th C. The Munster river valley lies within the Massif des Vosges, a region of wooded heights, fragrant pastures, glacial lakes and diary farms. It lies beyond the town that marks the southern end of the wine route. We drive to Thann first.
From the town the road climbs through forests of mid-green oak and lighter beech and elm — cuckoos call, invisible among the branches — mixed with resin-scented pine, to the top of the Grand Ballon, the highest summit in the Vosges mountains. So high that drifts of snow still lie in shady hollows. The panorama takes in the surrounding peaks, plus the Black Forest, and, although it’s not clear enough to see them while we’re here, the Jura mountains and the Alps.
Further south, the Munster valley represents all that is compellingly beautiful about the French countryside in spring. It’s a mosaic of greens: the fresh green of spring grasses and budding vines, the deep hues of young wheat, lightening as the ears show in the maturing crops. Green is patch-worked with vivid yellow swathes of canola, orange-brown or chocolate ploughed fields, and the green-and-brown stripes of rows of vines.
Dams, lakes, and tree-lined creeks and rivers shimmer. Ducks fly up, or paddle, a large grey heron watches motionless for tiny fish. Drifts of wildflowers tangle: white daisies, tiny to large, with yellow or grey centres; yellow dandelions and miniature buttercups, yellow broom laden with pea-shaped flowers; poppies from deep red to salmon; purples and blues threaded through it all; May bush is decked in blossom, more white than green. A hazy gauze of grasses ends in tiny, pinkish flower-heads.
Bees buzz busily among the wildflowers or the creamy, pyramid-candleflowers of chestnut trees. The hills gently roll, plentifully wooded; cows, white, tan, or black and white, chew the cud in open pastures or lie about under trees; horses lean into shade, there’s the odd solitary donkey; rolls of newly-cut hay send their sweet fresh scent rising and drifting. And in the Munster Valley, briefly, there’s the acrid stench of the yards where the milkers gather.
We find the town, but not the cheese-making-and tasting diary that’s open to the public. R is deeply unconcerned, but I’m disappointed… I’d wanted the opportunity to taste the cheese described by local author Jean Egen as "powerfully dialectic, marrying pleasure with repulsion, delight with pestilence: German smell, French flavour, a typically alsacien cheese". Serve with a Gewurztraminer.
The storks - could they be confused?
Any reader who knows Alsace will be wondering when the storks will get a mention. Integral to the self-concept of the region, storks are symbols of happiness and faithfulness, fertility and luck. According to legend, storks deliver new babies to their families. A child wanting a little brother or sister places a piece of sugar on the window ledge to attract a stork, hoping that it will leave a precious bundle in exchange for the treat.
White storks, large and imposing, are possibly strong enough to carry babies. They build
their nests among humans, and eat troublesome vermin. Unsurprisingly, over thousands of years, storks became part of folklore and myth. Greeks and Romans believed that storks didn’t die of old age, but flew to islands and took on human appearance. They portrayed storks as models of parental devotion. Moreover, they were thought to care for their own aged parents, feeding them and even transporting them; children’s books depicted them as a model of filial values. The Greeks went a step further, making a law called Pelargonia, from the word pelargos for stork, that required citizens to take care of their aged parents. We could learn from this precedent...
Storks rely on thermals to soar and glide on their annual migrations between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, a 7,000 km trip. By the 1980s, though, their numbers had catastrophically reduced, to an estimated two pairs left in the wild. Research and breeding centres aiming to keep them in Alsace all year round and so avoid the dangers of migration have been a great success. For the first three years, young storks are kept in enormous enclosed aviaries to curtail the instinct to migrate. Other steps to encourage their repopulation include repairing deteriorating nests between breeding seasons, developing special screens for power poles to prevent electrocution, and forbidding residents from removing nest from their chimneys and rooftops. About 400 pairs now live in Alsace, about half still migrating each year.
Those compelled by their strange upbringing to stay behind must surely be confused!
Visitors to Alsace, don’t have to look hard for storks (la cigogne in French). From souvenir shops to decorations, they are everywhere. We see the real ones fossicking in the gutters of steep-pitched roofs for sticks to replenish their huge, ungainly nests of bundled twigs, which they otherwise stand on, surveying the scene and tending to their young. They’ve even been known to squeeze water from moss in their beaks into the chicks’ thirsty mouths.
The adults launch themselves now and then to skim the air on outspread wings edged in black. And we hear them: bill clattering, loud as machine-gun fire, is how the adult pairs greet each other, and their chicks. We see them, too, one day as we drive by, stalking elegantly through the light green fuzz of a watery paddock, hunting frogs and insects, attendant egrets trailing in their wake.
So… how did it come about? The ‘confusion’?
Cut off from the rest of France by the Vosges mountains, separated from Germany by the Rhine, Alsace is a slender and beautiful region that has been one of the most fought over in Europe. Over a period of a century, from the 19th to the 20th alone, Alsace was caught four times in a miserable tug-of-war between France and Germany, beginning with Germany’s fifty year rule following the Franco-Prussian War.
The population needed to be resilient to cope, and found various ways to do so. For instance, when Alsace was under German occupation between 1870 and 1914, Hansi, the talented Colmar artist, stimulated the town’s passive resistance to German influence by keeping alive the region’s traditional image "with his humorist drawings of grotesque-looking German soldiers and good-natured villagers in regional costume" (Michelin Guide).
 |
| Hansi girl; Hansi Museum, Riquewihr |
An Allied victory in World War 1 brought Alsace back to France again. But peace was short-lived, and this calm and idyllic land was under siege again when Hitler launched an offensive into the Rhineland to reclaim it. During the Second World War there were four years of intensive Germanisation. Afterwards, France once more asserted rights over this beautiful valley. Its history of turmoil is not confined to recent times. As long ago as the ninth century, the region was bartered continuously — a prize for the biggest and strongest.
Constant conflict has contributed to the unique character of the Alsace. Time and again, vineyards that were carefully nurtured and built up were destroyed by war. And changing governments put restrictions on growers regarding both the methods of production and the varieties of grapes they could cultivate. After the Franco-Prussian War, for example, the victorious Germans passed legislation compelling the Alsace growers to make wine from inferior grape varieties for the purpose of blending. The wine was used to supply everyday table wines for Germans, while giving German producers the edge in exporting quality wines.
When France reclaimed the region after World War 1, growers were forced to strip out the common vines and produce quality wines again. This decision wasn’t necessarily popular: it’s much easier to grow common grapes than the more temperamental, noble varieties. The growers eventually settled to the rigours of quality-vine cultivation. But twenty years later, Germany again imposed its demands, causing confusion, resentment and commercial hardship among growers.
After World War Two, the Code du Vin was passed, setting standards for the distinctive wines now associated with Alsace. The best are single-grape varieties. Ironically, though, and an indication of the Alsatian dual nature is that wine struggles for supremacy with lager beer. The best in France is brewed in this region; like the wines, it's fresh, and strong. The wine itself is balanced between French and German: fruity and scented, yet dry and crisp.
