Tippling The White Fantastic

My holiday with my friend Graham from Katoomba in the Blue Mountains was a lot of fun and we certainly knocked up some miles both on foot and by car, train and boat. For the first 2 days we looked around the local area of Darmstadt, Bad Konig and Michelstadt. It took quite some perserverence given the heavy rain and the end of both days saw me stuffing my shoes with news paper to try and dry them.

On the Wednesday we went to Heidelberg for the ubiquitous tour of the castle and the viewing of its 220,000 litre wine barrel as well as taking the funicular rail to the top of the mountain to the Konigstuhl (Kings Seat) and then trudging back down the mountain to the city.

We left on Thursday for a main driving tour and drove north to Bingen where Graham and I jumped on one of the Rhine River cruises to Koblenz for a 2.5 hour cruise past some 50 odd castles, set amongst picturesque vineyards whilst Bettina took the car on ahead to meet us at the other end. The weather had really picked up by then so it was a magic little journey. At Koblenz where the Rhine and the Moselle Rivers meet (the Deutsch Ecke)we spent some time looking around at the magnificent statues and the fabulous old buildings of the town centre before heading off down the Moselle for the next 3 days.

We managed to score overnight appartments on most nights with balconies over looking the Moselle from where we could sip a couple of bottles of great wine and snack on cheese before heading out for dinner and more sampling of the local grape juice. On 2 evenings (after Graham and Bettina had retired for the evening) I got to meet the wine makers at 2 of the places we stayed and over long discussions on wine and viticulture styles I managed to get beautifully inebriated.



The white wines offered along the Moselle are truly magnificent with the area known as Urziger Wurzgarten getting my vote for best wine of the trip. Their Rivaner and dry Moselle were exceptional. Vineyards in this region depending on who you talk to are incredibly steep with gradients between 68-72 degrees. The grapes are harvested by a series of cable drawn pulley cars that run up the slopes between the rows of vines. Tough, hard, unrelenting work for anyone but the end result speaks for itself. Dr.Loosen 2003 Urziger Wurgarten Auslese, a very fine wine from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region is also to be found here. The meals served everywhere enroute were fantastic I have certainly put on a bit of weight of the last 16 days.

We eventually ended up in Trier for a look around before drifting across into Luxemburg for a short visit and then heading to Thionville in France for an evening. After that it was off to Colmar in the Alsace via Saint-Die (notable for its church and museum) for 2 nights and regional wine tasting at the cellar doors in Eguisheim and surrounds. After stopping off in Bitche and viewing the citadel and the "Gardens of Peace" we headed over to Lembach (entry place to view the Maginot Line)to stay the night. The following day was Wissembourg for lunch before heading up the Deutches Weinstrasse ( German wine route) through the Rhine Pfalz area. A few more tastings and purchases before rolling on home to Darmstadt.

The next couple of days were taken up with trips to vineyards closer to home around Wiesbaden at Hessische Staatsweingüter Kloster Eberbach where "The Name of the Rose" with Sean Connery, originally a book by Umberto Ecco was produced in the the holy vaults beneath the monastery.
Kloster Eberbach [klos-tur ay-bur-bark] is a 12th Century Cistercian abbey and now the HQ of the German Wine Academy. These days some of the modern dry Rheingau Rieslings are as distinguished in their own way as the great sweet wines of the region. Dry Rieslings from the Rheinpfalz further south where we had just toured had always been a different matter – richer, riper and with a healthier balance of fruit intensity and acidity. Maybe the Rheingau was just too cool a microclimate to do the same thing. Could it be a change of generation, with younger, better-educated winemakers taking over from their parents in the same way as has happened elsewhere in winemaking Europe?

All of my vineyard purchases were white wines which is what Germany and the French Alsace are reknown for, I did however score some great reds from the French supermarkets which are always favourably priced. The French supermarkets provided a wonderful array or terrines, pates, cold meats, pastries and cheeses to help keep the furnace stoked for a large part of the trip :) Mmmmmmm just love the way the French do food!!!!!

All told 1200km in the car plus the boat trip, several train trips and a great deal of walking through villages,museums, churches, up mountains, through castles and fortifications and around vineyards. Totally exhausting but really fascinating and rewarding both in an intellectual and an olfactory sense. Gave my single a brain cell a real work out :)