Thursday, January 1, 2009

Overview and map of Alsace Wine Route Villages

Last month (April ) I did a road trip to the Alsace Wine Region in France. The area is famous for Riesling and Gewurtzraminer (white) wines. What can I say, I fell in love with the place! The whole region is so pretty, amazing, gastronomic and intoxicating! Haha! As the popular slogan goes — drink moderately, if you are in the area =)



Alsace Wine Route Map



For starters I have here below 2 maps of the Alsace Wine Route and Villages.









As you can see on the right map, there are many villages that fall along the 170-kilometre wine route and all these villages are pretty and welcoming in their own right. Some are bigger while the others are smaller. Because I do not have a week to leisurely explore these lovely places, obviously I have to make a choice, which proved to be quite difficult at first because I wanted to visit them all. On the left map shows a condensed map highlighting the popular villages.



Ideally, visitors to this region need a minimum of 2-3 days to see the highlights at a travelable not rushing pace. This is of course excluding the big cities such as Mulhouse and Strasbourg, the latter you need to spend at least a day or two. Based from my recent experience, I suggest a maximum of 3 villages in a day — first village in the morning where you have coffee, second village during midday where you spend your lunch at, and the third village in the afternoon for tea and to close the day. The villages are very near each other, about 10-15 minutes away. To calculate actual distances, go to googlemaps.



For Colmar, since this is a bigger town, I suggest to spend a day or a lunch until the afternoon here or during summer into the evening when the terraces are open late.











The actual Road Trip



So these are the wine villages (and cities) I visited during my road trip:



Ribeauville

Riquewihr

Kaysersberg

Eguisheim

Turckheim

St. Hippolyte (and Haut Konigsburg)

Colmar (where I stayed)

Strasbourg (where I did a pit stop going back – lunch, this city needs a revisit from moi in the near future)



Colmar I believe was the best place to base this trip because the city literally is nestled in the heart of the wine growing area giving it easy access to the villages up north as well as down south. The city is even christened as the capital of Alsatian wine. Well, I can tell you this, Colmar is the gateway to the Alsace wine country.



I chose these villages based on the reviews and pictures I saw online while researching the trip. And I strongly believed as well that I have indeed chosen the prettiest and best wine villages.



Stay tuned! I will be posting my stories and pictures soon.


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