June 6 Route du vin, north from Riquewihr

The wine route is a well-marked journey on secondary roads, all drivable, but with footpaths (sentiers) through the vineyards, and hiking trails with signs noting the walking time to near and distant towns. The towns are in clusters, so that one can visit one and then walk through vineyards to the next, which may be only two kilometers away.



Some of the towns - generally those in the foothills rather than the plain - are designated Grand Cru, some not, but all are full of vintners. Many homes have kitchen gardens, but most of the open land in this area is cultivated in grapes.

Our first stop was Hunawihr, known for its fortified church overlooking vineyards. It also is home to the Center for the Reintroduction of Storks and of Otters. Picture-book Alsace has long been a summer breeding place for picture-book storks (in the winter they go south - we saw many of them in Marrakesh), but they have been disappearing. This center is part of an effort encourage their return. I'm not sure how, as we didn't visit it.

When we travel we often look for the places pictured in our guidebooks, but somehow we totally missed (until several days after being there) that the Hunawihr church is the cover photo of two of our books.

Hunawihr was our first Alsace vineyard walk - Throughout the wine region there are "Sentier Viticole" signs to follow, but really, one can simply head into a vineyard and walk between the rows. Sometimes we were the only people. Occasionally we saw extremely large hares.
Sometimes we encountered walking tours. This man has a wineglass around his neck. He's part of a group that is hiking between wineries, all ready for tastings.







Making ourselves pass up an assortment of other little towns, we continued to Ribeauvillé - a much larger hill town, and full of tourists. If we hadn't gotten lucky with a parking space, we probably would have skipped it. We had a wine, then walked to the top of the town and up to the castle ruins of St Ulrich (worth the stop), and down for hazelnut ice cream.



















Buildings in Ribeauvillé had picturesque details like the ones in Riquewihr. Some of the decorations were pretty funny. This old carving from the front of a building reminds me of the line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "I fart in your general direction."















Bergheim is quiet, unassuming town; it does not seem to cater to tourists much, but it is a Grand Cru town and is concerned with serious wine making and selling. By now we had discovered that one of our travel books, Oz Clarke's Wine Companion to Champagne and Alsace, had valuable tips that we should have been attending to. One his recommendations, Vinstub du Sommelier, was also in a list I got from my friend Charleyne. We ate crudités, and chunks of pink-skinned munster with Riesling jelly, in a shady garden. The two jars behind my plate contain caraway seeds and coarse salt, presumably for sprinkling on the somewhat dusky 'pain de seigle' or wheat-rye bread that we often ate on this trip (see the Colmar posting on ergotism).













Later, we bought Gewurz jelly and berry jams from Haguenauer/L'Eglantine de Bergheim.


About the language and nationality: Vinstub=(German) Weinstube="wine room," a cafe specializing in wine. We heard a lot of German on our trip - we were very close to Germany, and Alsace is a great wine-shopping vacation for Europeans - but from Alsatians, we heard French that did not sound particularly accented to us. Place names and surnames were largely German. But Alsace actually has its own very old language that isn't a modern mix of French and German, but rather an old Germanic language. People still speak it, but we have no idea if we heard it anywhere.

Here's a sundial on the side of a building. Sundials seem to be a big thing there. I could do a whole blog entry of them, but I probably won't.

After a bit more driving it was time to head south on the primary road, to Colmar.




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