Christmas in Alsace
All roads lead to Rome, but specific routes along the Franco‑german border bring you through quaint villages and historical wine and food stops – and festive markets this wonderful time of year, says Kevin Pilley
The Route du Vins d’alsace, on the far eastern fringe of France on the German border, winds for nearly 121km across the lower slopes of the Vosges mountains and through plains extending to the Rhine. It stretches from Marlenheim near Strasbourg, through Colmar, and down to Thann, near the border with the ancient Franche-comte. This route is traversed by wine lovers, gourmets and a new breed of cabbage, carp and sauerkraut connoisseurs – as well as Noel tourists.
Besides this famed Alsatian wine route, there’s Alsace’s Sauerkraut Road, which is younger, but no less fragrant and colourful. It celebrates the fact that the region – so named for being lawless and beyond legal jurisdiction – produces two-thirds of all sauerkraut or charcoute made in France and that cabbage-shredding is an ancient popular pastime. Alsace produces a fifth of France’s white wine and 50 percent of its beer. The Fried Carp Road was created in 1975 and takes visitors through the Sundgau region with its superb fish restaurants and fishing stretches.
A stop in Strasbourg (the town’s name translates to “town at the crossroads”) is a must, with its Gerberviertel tanners’ district, hôtels particulier in former palaces, horse restaurants, the well-preserved Maison Kammerzell hotel that reflects the ornate style of medieval England, and
the central Place Kléber square. After paying respects at the towering late‑gothic sandstone cathedral with its astronomical clock and the city’s other églises, and checking out the Prussian military architecture, the three‑bridge and the four‑tower medieval Ponts Couverts bridge over the River Ill, the wine route beckons.
Especially at Christmas time, when much is to be mulled.
A MEDIEVAL MEANDER
Following the wine road by coach or car driver takes you through small, relentlessly picturesque villages with cobbled streets, tinkling stone fountains, canals, half‑timbered 16th‑ and 17th‑century houses with oriel windows and, in spring, window box after window box of trailing geraniums. In most places, storks look down their noses from rooftop nests; they are used to armies passing through this area. Now, tourists do not worry them unduly. Wending your viticulturist’s way through places such as Bergheim (famous for its nativity scene), Ribeauvillé and Kirchheim, the villages get quainter as they get more difficult to pronounce. Niedermorschwihr, no doubt, is a real tongue‑twister after a couple of glasses.
But the wine road is to be travelled, and some of the most beautiful villages in France enjoyed, with a green‑stemmed goblet in hand and a tall, slope‑shouldered aoc flute bottle or Rhin du vin nearby. Seven types of wines are available: sylvaner, riesling, gewurtztraminer, muscat d’alsace, tokay pinot gris, pinot blanc or klevner, and the pinot noir rosé. Some have been made for over a thousand years in the area Louis IV
called France’s “wonderful garden”. Colmar is the region’s wine capital and Alsace in a nutshell: Renaissance buildings, Gothic architecture, cobbled alleyways and half-timbered buildings that are not quite kitsch and verging on cute. It even has its own Petite Venice (Place des SixMontagnes-noires), where market gardeners used to ply their trade on punts. For trivia fanatics, Colmar was the birthplace of F.A. Bartholdi, the man who built the Statue of Liberty in 1866. Colmar also claims to have the lowest rainfall in the whole of France.
Size-wise, it’s quite manageable even for the reluctant stroller, who will be pleased by the number of characterful winstubs or taverns and restaurants en route, where it’s possible to try foie gras ( an Alsatian invention), baeckeoffe (a meat and white wine stew), matelote (fish simmered in wine and onion sauce), onion tart/tarte flambée (a kind of doublecream-and-onion pizza), Munster cheese and kougelhopf, a pastry dessert with the looks, but fortunately not the taste, of a top hat. There is also a toy museum. TASTES OF TRADITION Colmar’s Christmas market, Christkindlesmarkt or Weihnachtsmärkte, is one of the most definitive of Europe’s increasing number of street markets that go back to the late Middle Ages. Dresden’s Striezelmarkt dates to 1434, although Bautzen’s is older. Frankfurt held its first in 1393. Munich’s was 1310. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Advent is often heralded by a “Christ child market” held in the town square. Traditional foods include zwetschgen-männle (figures made of decorated dried plums),
kartoffelpuffer (potato pancakes), schaumkuss (chocolate-covered marshmallows), maroni (roasted chestnuts) and lots of gingerbread men – and plenty of fortifying mulled glühwein or vin du chaud.
Most Christmas markets start around St. Catherine’s Day (November 26), ending on Epiphany (January 6). Dortmund and Cologne’s markets are the biggest and perhaps the most popular. Vienna’s is huge. Strasbourg has staged its Christkindelsmärik since 1570, when it was part of the Holy Roman Empire. The seat of the European Parliament and
capital of the Bas-rhin department’s market boasts Europe’s largest Christmas tree. But the markets under Riquewihr’s ramparts, in the Place de la Réunion in Mulhouse, Colmar’s Place des Dominicains and Place de L’ancienne, and around the Coeur de l’arsenal in Kaysersberg are more intimate, authentic and less commercialised. They feel more like local community events with their twinkling fairy lights, carousels, wreaths, window displays, illuminated nativity scenes and cribs (Bergheim has a trail of 50), strolling minstrels, children singing Christmas carols, and aproned locals selling local lace and delicacies such as bredeles (star-aniseflavoured twists), pain d’epices loaves, hot fruit juice, brandy elixirs and spiced bierre de Noël. Rather than an exercise in Noël tourism, Alsace’s famed Christmas markets are a celebration of local handicrafts and gastronomy, as well as the festive spirit.
Perhaps the most atmospheric is held in Guebwiller in the Haut-rhin department. Its annual Christmas market celebrates a Blue Christmas. The town is decorated and lit in blue, not in celebration of the effect of low winter temperatures, but the turquoise work of local 19th-century art deco faience (tin-glazed artwork on pale earthenware) potter Joseph-théodore Deck. North-east France is all very gemütlich – cosy and homely, especially at this time of year.