Between the vines and the fairytale villages, try the amazing local dishes – from choucroute to tarte flambée – on the Alsace Wine Route in France. Plus loads of wine and Alsatian Gemütlichkeit … joie de vivre.

 

On a breezy, sweltering Sunday of July, Joseph and I are whirling along the Alsace Wine Route in France – the route du vin. Only this time, we are doing it from south to north, on our way back to Strasbourg. I know the itinerary by heart now, 30 years after I first came to the region. But there are always discoveries to be made and stones (and vineyards) unturned.

The 170-kilometre (105-mile) wine route winds through some 119 communes viticoles – wine-growing communities – and their forested, foothill terroirs. The villages are festooned in flowerpots and ornate trappings of medieval and Renaissance history. The treasures include maisons à colombages (half-timbered houses), palaces, churches and hilltop fortresses.

Our trip starts where it usually winds up – among the ramparts and conical hills of Eguisheim. The birthplace of Pope Saint Leon IX has several sights named after him – a chateau, a square and a fountain.

France has incontestably the prettiest signs in the world (and yes, we are in France … and this is one of the most French sounding signs you will see in Alsace! In the village of less-French sounding Eguisheim)

Alsace Wine Route, France: Enchanting Signs

It’s incredible how a simple sign can hold such eternal fascination. The decorative wrought iron enseignes of France have that effect on me. The sign on A La Ville de Nancy in Eguisheim is adorably pretty and seemingly always wreathed in a bright blue sky. As we tuck into plates of pickled choucroute with fish, the owner tells us that the Fête des Vignerons will descend on the village in August (though it seems to me the food and wine festival in Alsace is year-round).

Cabbage and Choucroute

“Gewürzt” grapes. Used in the famous white wine, Gewürztraminer.

“L’ALSACE EST CHOU!” proclaims a banner as we wind through the countryside of medieval huddles of red-tiled roofs, church spires, fountains and flower boxes.

The jingle has a double sense. Chou means cabbage, but also darling in French … How are you, my little cabbage? Mon petit chou, or even chouchou.

I will never forget my first cabbage encounters arriving in Alsace in 1996.

“In Alsace cabbage is king,” the taxi driver told me as we whirled through fields of big green orbs on our way to Strasbourg.

Much of Alsace’s agricultural wealth was founded on the cabbage, which also underpins its iconic regional dish – le choucroute garnie. Alsace’s answer to sauerkraut is not for the fainthearted (or vegetarians like me). It comes on plates piled high to the ceiling with cabbage, potatoes, onion, bacon and massive chunks of pork.

Anyway, just as choucroute embodies Alsace’s geographical and cultural contradictions, so too do many of its iconic dishes and wines. Notably the Gewürztraminer. (The region was volleyed back and forth across the Rhine River five times between 1871 and 1945 … anyone would suffer a personality crisis after that.)

Flammekueche, Vin, Wein and More Wine

Here, the most famous dishes are not entrecotes and crème caramel, but choucroute, kougelhopf – a moulded brioche of macerated fruits – and flammekueche or tarte flambée (depending on whether you speak Alsatian or French tongue). The crispy, wood-fired rectangular crust is topped with lashings of fromage blanc (fresh white cheese), sliced onions, smoked ham and crème fraîche.

The Route du Vin sweeps through over 100 HanselGretel pretty villages in the foothills of the Vosges mountains. Each has its own typical tastes and “messti” – festivals. For celebrating the cultivation of wine, hops, cabbage and onions, and fabrication of kougelhopf, mirabelle plums, Munster cheese, bretzels and baeckaoffa – another hefty spud and meat casserole.

Riesling and Gewürztraminer are the two predominant grapes … As one winemaker puts it: “The four seigneurs of Alsace wines are Riesling, Tokay-Pinot Gris, Muscat and Gewürztraminer, which all fall under the AOC (appellation) vin d’Alsace.”

Ecky thump! Alsatian style … le choucroute garnie.

French-German Identity on the Alsace Wine Route

The distinguished family-run maison Hugel has graced the fortified village of Riquewihr since 1639. (Clearly, the maison was well-fortified too by all that wine to withstand worse-than-Viking attacks).

Winemaker Etienne Hugel, who sadly died at the young age of 57 in 2016, put Alsace’s French-German dual “identity problem” in a nutshell … (Let’s call it a split personality in a nice, doubly rich kind of way).

“Because of this problem, there has been a lot of confusion between Alsace and German wines.”

(Reading between the lines, this has done lots of damage … How could we forget the Blue Nun Rieslings of the 70’s any more than candle-bottle Chianti).

Clearly the Alsatian vignerons feel their product is far superior … Hugel was part of a “Riesling revolution”, in which Alsace’s dry, full-bodied Rieslings distanced themselves from traditionally sweet and sticky German wines. And they established themselves as a gastronomic wine par excellence (I can vouch many times over for that).

Ribeauvillé: A Gem of the Alsace Wine Route, France

In the neighbouring fortified florally town of Ribeauvillé (definitely more under siege by geranium pots today than Vikings or any other threat), Pierre Trimbach – the “roi of Riesling” – is the 12th generation winemaker at the Domaine Trimbach, founded in 1626. While Riesling is the flagship wine, he believes delicious Pinot Gris, with its mix of herbaceous, pollen, smoky and forest floor notes is a good Chardonnay alternative. (Pinot Gris makes a fantastic companion to spicy Asian dishes, noodles, coriander, etc.)

Every June, the citizens of Ribeauvillé spend an entire Sunday debating whether their village can lay claim to the birth of the Kougelhopf. (These are the kind of quaint and sweet folkloric activities just about every Alsace village engages in) … The toasted almond wreathed cake, shaped like a crown, is the festive symbol of Alsace, often downed with aperitif or dessert wines. At Patisserie SchaalCo (28 Grand’Rue), I buy packets of petite chocolate-dunked bretzels and soft gingerbread pain d’epices – traditionally Christmas cookies, but good at any time of the year. Particularly, for a French tart like me, it makes me go weak at the knees.

Flammekueche – sometimes translated slapdash as a French pizza

Head to a Winstub to Eat Local Dishes

The adorable and cosy winstub – little wooden dens for drinking loads of wine and eating hearty dishes – dot the village streets. They are decked with hearts and roosters, geese and grapes, red checkered tablecloths and dainty jade-green stemmed glasses.

 

Obernai: In the Foothills of the Vosges Mountains

In Obernai, at the winstub Le Freiberg (46, rue du Général Gouraud), we down gratinéed tarte flambées of Emmental cheese, onion and cream. As if that wasn’t enough, we then share a sweet cream, apple and cinnamon variety. The key to a perfect, crisp, almost paper-thin tart, says Sacha Bender, owner and cook, lies in sticking closely to tradition.

Flammekueche means flamed, referring to the lightly charred outer crust. The Frisbee-shaped tarts started out as a humble worker’s dish in the 1930s. Villagers kept a bit of dough aside when making bread in the communal oven. While the stove was warming up, they would cook the tarts and eat them directly from the shovel!

Today, authentic winstubs serve them up straight from the oven to the table on a wooden board.

Nothing embodies Alsace’s bon vivant spirit – the proverbial gemütlichkeit – better than the winstub. So bon appetit – make that guten appetit perhaps?

Ah non, in fact it’s e güeter Àppetit …

Parlez vous Alsacien?

Don’t miss:

• The village of Andlau and its forests and bears (sculptures)
• In the adjacent valley, the Vallée d’Andlau, the Domaine Remy Gresser is a long-time fave. I need to head there and get another boot load of its organic Rieslings, crisp, clean and minerally.
• From the beginning of August to mid-October, numerous wine harvest festivals take place along the wine route. To celebrate with winegrowers and locals, read up on the programs here.
• Niedermorschwihr near Colmar is a delightful single-street village. Here you will find the Maison Ferber’s artisan jams, chocolates and pastries. Put another way, Christine Ferber is an award-winning pâtissier, confiseur, chocolatier.