La Route des Vins and to Reims - the champagne capital

After our relaxed week on the canal we took the train via Strasbourg, and arrived at La Gare Colmar followed by a short walk to our accommodation at Martin Jund winery right in the heart of the old quarter.

After a week on the boat it was chores for the first part of the afternoon! Then we set off to find where we were going to ward off starvation this evening. We settled on Le Jardin du Caveau St Joan. The food was very good, the wine a very good sec Alsace Riesling, and the setting very much Alsatian.

The town was busy with tourists all afternoon, it's a very pretty place augmented with plenty of brand retail to cater for bored and wanting to shop tourists. 

 

Sunday morning we did the Rick Steve/Steve tour of the old town. It is very picturesque and the buildings are amazing, and very well preserved/restored.

Lots of money has gone into restoration of some of these old town centres and the houses, though hundreds of years old, are still in use. The EC provides a subsidy of about 15% of the cost of renovation, so there must have been many billions of Euros disappear into that area. We selected the night’s eating place while we walked, Le Comptoir de Georges, a butchery/brasserie with a balcony over the canal in La Petite Venise. The canal system was all things to all people when the town was young, the tanners flushed their skin treatments chemicals into it, the laundry was done in it, people fished, and the fisherman delivered produce to market on flat bottomed skiffs. So it must have been an interesting piece of water.

We spent an hour or so viewing the Isenheim Altarpiece now on display in the old Dominican Church while its usual  musee home gets an upgrade. Used the audio guide, as the English interpretive signage is a bit on the light side. It is a stunning piece of work done by sculptor Nicolas de Haguenau, and painter Mathis Gothart Nithart known as Grunewald between 1512 and 1516. It's a series of paintings on hinges that pivot like shutters  so has several 'leaves'. The first "picture" is the centre carving.

 

We later visited its regular home, the Unterlinden Musee, apparently the most visited museum in Europe, however the only signage in English was the one at the entry which outlined the organisation objectives (you know excellence, make you a happy visitor etc). We gave them a total fail on all objectives, with zero signage in Anglais or any language other than Francais. There was lots of interesting stuff on display however without a bit of interpretive stuff to accompany it, you can only stand and marvel. We would have preferred a tad more than that.

Dinner at the Le Comptoir was at the excellent end of the scale and the venue was lovely. We did the romantic walk back through the old quarter, with the buildings lit by pastel coloured lights.

Monday am we headed to pick up the car from Avis. We walked in rain 20 minutes to the designated pickup place on the Route de Strasbourg. No Avis! Apparently the branch closed a couple of months ago and Avis had been too slack to tell us of a change. So we walked off in the other direction to find  the office downtown at La Gare. Still raining. We had walked a couple of hundred metres when a car tooted and pulled in behind us. It was a young Frenchwoman who had been in the service station while we were trying to sort out the missing Avis. She drove us to La Gare. Unfortunately we didn’t get her contact details, she really was a bit of a Godsend! Avis was unapologetic, but did find our reservation. The car looks like it’s been through at least a couple of laps of a stock car demolition derby, dents and scratches on almost every panel. I felt like painting a big “As supplied by Avis” on the sides for our two weeks of touring around France. At the moment Avis are on notice! We’ll see what their response is. TomTom got some good exercise getting out of town; we had about seven “Route Barree” signs so had to deviate each time, much to her consternation.

We eventually prevailed and headed for Kayserberg to go to a market (very average) and see its historic 16th century fortified bridge, with a chapel at its centre. This bridge was spared after negotiation with the 'barbarian enemies of the Republic' in WWII, who were going to blow it up to stop the American tanks. Kayserberg is on a strategic route over the Vosges to Nancy. The townspeople persuaded the Germans to allow them to dig an anti-tank trench instead and the bridge was saved. How anyone could think of destroying this stuff is incomprehensible without the 'all’s fair in love and war' justification to fall back on.

Did see a stork there too, on top of the monument to the fallen in WWI and II. Particularly moving was the tribute to the men from the village who had been pressed into the German army after they were conquered. 130,000 Alsatian men were forced to fight, mostly on the Russian Front.

It was then on to Eguisheim, with a fascinating walk around the ramparts of the town – wealthy houses on the side with the view and their barns on the opposite side of the lane, but now converted to houses. It is called “the prettiest village “in France and it probably deserves the title, a lovely village in the middle of vast areas of grapes. The pictures can carry this one.

 

 Alsace grows all seven white varieties, and the wine is cheap, from 6-9 Euro for standard and perhaps 15 Euro for Grand Cru. We did a sampling at Maison Martin Jund and sampled about six Rieslings, a Pinot Gris and a Pinot Blanc. Always good to do these things with one of the people involved in the process. The family farms about 18 ha in 6 different locations and produces mainly whites. They do a Pinot Noir, but like most here it’s very light and is treated like a Rose and served chilled. There are a couple of bottles of a Grand Cru Riesling to bring home.

Our next stay was in another pretty Route des Vins village, a B&B in Ribeauville, La Maison des Roses.

This offered a couple of days of walking from view to view from castle ruins, and then a longer walk through the vines and several of the very picturesque medieval age villages. There are ruins of three castles on the hill above Ribeauville, built between 1050 to 1300.The history is fascinating and the views superb.

 

The walk through the vines was done with the occasional other walker, but as we walked through the middle of the day, some villages were totally deserted…..it’s that lunchtime  thing again.

 

That night we dined on Alsatian specialities (Poulet au Riesling with spaetzle, and Fleischnacka – check out the recipes online) at Au Cheval Blanc, a restaurant close by.

The next night we had a wine tasting scheduled so planned something a bit less elaborate, like pizza, or Tarte Flambee, as they call it here – a very crisp base with the usual suspects on the top.

We did the wine-tasting at Cave du Ribeauville. This is the local cooperative, with 10 of the local villages supplying through it, and the winegrowers often behind the bar to guide tastings. It was very good, tasted mainly Riesling, but also dallied with Cremant D’Alsace, Muscat (very dry), and Gewürztraminer. So we found out why some small patches of grapes we noticed as we walked haven’t been harvested (bad botrytis) and that the season had not been great with not enough sun and rain at the wrong time. Our tasting guide made some bio (organic) wines and some regular, and said the bio is harder to do and he makes less from it because of that. So not a long term commitment to the genre. We bought just a couple, one Grand Cru to bring home for the cellar, and one for the road. Prices are very cheap for some very nice wines.

Our fellow guests in Ribeauville, whom we breakfasted with, were an Italian couple from Ascoli Piceno east of Rome which we have put on the visiting list for another time. We then set out on the next stage of our travels through the Route des Vins in drizzle. Tomtom had a rare mistake, sent us driving off towards St Marie aux Mines, and then after about 5 minutes told us to turn around. Haven’t been able to check yet whether she was right or wrong. Anyway we did get to Chateau du Haut Koenigsbourg in the misty hills just north of us. The castle is elevated at 755m, with the plains below at about 200m above sea level. It’s about 800 years old, and was restored by the Kaiser Wilhelm II between 1900 and 1908. We were really in the clouds, so no view at all  except in a postcard but it is a grand restoration and was well worth a look.

Next stop KL Natzweiler-Struthof, the concentration camp set up by the Nazis in France in WWII. As Germany had annexed Alsace-Lorraine, they’d probably argue that it was actually in Germany. It was raining and the camp is in high mountains so very cold, so we certainly could understand the hardships endured by the over 8000 inhabitants of the camp. The presentations are very graphic and you do walk away feeling very sad for those who suffered in such a ghastly way at the hands of their neighbours. The “memorial" aspect of the displays ensures “they will never forget, nor will those who died be forgotten.” As the Allied forces approached, those in the camp were force-marched to Dachau, over 6000 of them.

We drove on out of the mist and rain into a grey day, heading for Traenheim and a wine-tasting with Frederich Mochel. We had not arranged our visit and were admonished gently for that, however they treated us very well, summonsing the English speaking son, Guillaume, to talk us through the wines.  So the tasting was well supported by the local stuff that it’s nice to know. No further planting of new areas can be done here, the plantings are all at 230-260 m elevation on two 5 ha blocks for this vineyard. He is one of the few who retains hand picking for his classic varieties; most others have gone to machine harvesting. For Grand Cru and specialties all picking still has to be by hand. So he can’t plant any new areas and the cheapest he could buy additional land would be 100,000 Euro per ha, and there are very few sellers. We purchased a 2009 and a 2012 Grand Cru Riesling and a classic quaffer for the road. When he gave me the bill, with a complimentary “waiter’s friend” corkscrew, he said, “I have not charged for the classic, this is our gift for you” So a lovely visit, following on from Ross and Michelle’s call there in 2009.

On to Obernai for a stopover before departing for northern France. Last samplings of Alsace food at dinner and this time just a “picher” of house Riesling to accompany. Both meals were a lot of food, but good! For the record Obernai has another small wall and moat set up for the old town and our hotel, Le Gouverneur was built into the inside wall, in 1566. 

We departed next day for Reims via Fleury and Verdun. We went first to the wrong Fleury, but eventually got to the right place and saw the battlefields, left as they were, cratered by artillery bombardments. We then visited the French cemetery and a couple of other monuments. The main memorial display is undergoing a renovation for the commemoration of the centenary of the battle so was unfortunately closed. The Verdun battle cost more than 80,000 French lives, but over 300,000 were killed in this area in the course of the war. Again it was quite sobering to see and try to comprehend the hell that happened here. The cemetery has 16,000 marked French graves and the Ossuary memorial contains the remains of 130,000 unidentified French and German soldiers.

 

TomTom had a good day, enjoying a mix of motorway, toll roads, and very rural roads. I’m sure we bought a part of the A4 during our 400 km or so of travels for the day. It was good to get to Reims where we will be for three nights, so we’ll open the suitcases this time! Les Telliers is very handy to everything we want to do in the city; parking is a small garage over the road, which is very secure but is difficult to navigate into due to the parking habits of the locals. Our host gave us plenty of eating place recommendations so we are all set.

Saturday was a look at the historic cathedral, plenty of Jean of Arc there but not in very photogenic spots. The wars have been pretty cruel to this cathedral which towers over its whole surrounding area, with an incendiary shell setting it alight, and later artillery fire blasting holes in the nave.

But thanks to the generosity of the Rockefellers it was restored to its former Gothic glory. (Now its biggest enemy is the elements! Note the scaffolding.)

Then a spot of shopping and a walk to Maison Pommery for our Champagne tour. This started in the vineyards and took us all the way through the process and the caves to finish with a glass (just two) to sample. Very interesting tour. Another AOC, but one with many options, some houses buy in the grapes and don’t own vineyards, some have vineyards and contract in additional grapes, but like all these things very strict controls are in place. For Champagne, a grape yield no more than 12 tonne/ha for the Chardonnay, Pinot Noit or Pinot Meuniere. The blend is determined by the season. Blanc de Blanc (100% Chardonnay) for summer, Blanc de Noir (100% Pinot Noir and Pinot Meuniere) for winter and a Rose for spring. This Rose may have added red wine (for Pommery) or have some fermentation on the skins for others in the AOC.

Pommery has 250 ha of vines but buys in further grapes. Production is about 5 000 000 bottles pa. A hectare yields about 10,000 bottles, and the buy in price for grapes is about 6 Euro per kg, but the price goes down as compliance with the AOC requirements about soils, slopes, aspect etc goes down. As it does from Grand Cru to Premiere Cru to traditionale. It’s all hand picking here, and they dabble in the bio/organic/sustainable areas. They use a “sexual confusion” technology based on pheromones to control insect pests. The pheromones must be just strong enough for the butterflies.

A very grand place, developed by the very entrepreneurial Mrs Louise Pommery after her husband bought the original winery then died two years later. It has been operating for over 150 years. The tour was two and a half hours, so the day was about done after that. Dinner was one of our host's recommendations and very good fare at the art deco Brasserie du Boulingrin, a short walk away.

 

Extracted the car from the garage this morning and headed to Hautviller, which Rick Steve recommends as the Champagne village to go to if you are only going to one. Getting out of town was a bit fraught, the Reims marathon was on and there were lots of barricades to frustrate TomTom’s selected routes. At one point two burly policemen stepped off the pavement and flagged us down. My immediate reaction was, “How on earth do they know we’ve just been going through red lights and the wrong way down streets (traffic was very light). However he chatted away for a few moments and I intervened in Anglais, so we clarified where we were able to head. He gave us a wry “Good Luck” and in fact we avoided any barricades from then on.

We were heading to Hautviller to do a walk in the vineyards and the local forest. We had great views out over Epernay, which we remember fondly from our October 2 visit and the grape-planted hills around it. We visited the local abbey, where one Dom Perignon was the chief  cellarmaster and we all know what he invented and what occasioned him to run through the abbey one day shouting “I’m drinking stars!” His grave is in the abbey. We sat in a little village called Bellevue having lunch, yes, with the great view over the valley.

 

We did try on the way home to see bonsai and twisted trees in the Verzy forest. However it was a bad case of “non sign-posting” , and after a couple of km walk in the forest we threw in the towel. God loves a trier though.

Then it was home to get ready to depart earlyish tomorrow for another long travelling day. Farewell to the grapes, but maybe some Fruits de Mer on the Normandy Coast?