Last weekend I visited Strasbourg and Colmar France, and traveled down the Route du Vin, a road that traverses the vineyards of Alsace. Alsace is right on the boarder of France and Germany, and has switched nationalities many times in the past 100 years. 90% of Alsacian wine is white, with a small portion the red Pinot Noir. I got to taste quite a few of them including two Riesling, two Gwurztraminer, two Pinot Gris, and one Pinot Noir. The Route du Vin is filled with both small family-run wineries, and larger, internationally known ones.
Our first stop was Dopff au Moulin, an ancient vineyard farmed by the same family for over 400 years. We got a primer on wine making and tasting, got to see the perfectly manicured vineyards (I snuck a taste of the ripe grapes off the vine), and then we were treated to a tasting. Our host lined up glasses on a bar, and poured three different wines for us to compare. Light cake cleansed our palettes between tastings. My favorite was the Gwurztraminer, a spicy, floral wine with a complex flavor.
Afterwards we cruised down the road to a smaller winery called Allimant-Laugner. We got to see the giant oak casks where the wine is aged after fermentation, which were empty in anticipation of the harvest in just a couple of weeks. After getting educated on the wine making process, we headed in to do some more tasting. This time we tasted 4 wines, one of which was the Pinot Noir. We were all swirling our glasses, observing color, sniffing, and swishing the wine in our mouths like tourists pros.
As we drove back home we passed many abandoned castles atop hilly vineyards, reminders of the long history of Alsacian wine.
Hey Aarron I love the photos there really nice!