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