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Intoxicating Alsace, one of France’s prettiest region, is popular for its white wines

Drenched in the low winter sun’s brilliance one minute, engulfed in a thick blanket of fog the next, it turned out to be a rather interesting six-hour drive across Holland’s characteristic polder-scape. Past Germany’s verdant Rhine valley and gently rolling snow-dusted hills; to France, where the majestic Vosges (the mountain range), vineyards et al, rose from the misty plains, delicately silhouetted against a dull-orange twilight sky…Voila, we had arrived in Alsace! The 170 km long wine route, easily ranking high among France’s prettiest regions, stretches all the way from Strasbourg, (bordering Germany) in the North, to Mulhouse (near Basel, Switzerland) in the South, meandering through 100-odd medieval villages and towns.

Our Alsatian experience began, quite delightfully, in Bergheim, (the village we were staying in), which sat prettily in the lap of the Vosges. Driving through a magnificently preserved 17th Century archway, we got to our apartment-hotel La Cour Du Bailli. Its elegantly frescoed façade, charming central courtyard with overhanging wooden balconies, well-appointed rooms with thick wooden rafters and polished antique furniture, gave us an inkling why the rooms here are zapped-up months in advance! Bergheim is a stone’s throw from some of the most beautiful places along the wine route; the narrow, cobble-stoned streets of Colmar, with its much-photographed ‘Petite Venice’ district; the typically Alsatian half-timbered houses of Kaysersberg; pretty flower-decked wells in Obernai; grand towers and ramparts of Ribeauville and Riquewihr, a few gently crumbling, others in good repair and the sepia-toned still life that was Mittelbergheim, rightfully classified among France’s most beautiful villages. All along, crowded shops briskly sold the bright, hand-painted Alsatian pottery, the shopkeepers conversing in mellifluous, sing-song French. Milling tourists, some simply drinking in the sights, others savouring the ‘bottled bliss’, sip by delicious sip, in the region’s famous wine stubs.

Alsace slowly, tenderly seduces the senses, even when you’re completely sober. Winding our way, through the hills…The real star of Alsace is the vineyards. Daintily hugging the gently sloping mountainsides, the terraced vineyards looked like an enormous, multi-coloured, sun-kissed checkerboard — subtle green, lashings of autumn yellow, with a splash of rust. That is, it looked that way in the glossy wine route brochure. When we saw it, on a cold, wintry morning, the snow-jacketed vines looked scraggy and bent, almost devoid of life, making it difficult to believe that these vines would actually come alive in spring/summer and bear plump juicy bunches of grapes! Yet, we quickly fell under the spell of the swirling mists and snowy hillsides, and the stark, breathtaking beauty of the neat rows of slender white vines… White and wonderful – wine-tasting, at last!

Just a few minutes away from our apartment, was the wine-cellar and winery, also run by our hoteliers, La Famille Halbeisen, wine-makers since 1737. Walking in, we were pleasantly greeted (in impeccable English) by Aurelien Halbeisen, who asked us what we would like to taste. Now, since our knowledge of wines was somewhat limited — we could, roughly, tell apart the reds from the whites — we told him to recommend the wines, and he offered me a lovely, sweet Gewurztraminer and the husband a nice, dry Riesling, both superb whites. To Alsace’s credit, they never flinch when you simply quaff your wine, without the mandatory swirl-and-sniff routine. They smile, indulgently, when you call the wines nice/lovely/superb – hardly the elegant, mysterious language of wine connoisseurs!

We then followed him down to the cellars, where the wine lay fermenting in the huge, sealed oak barrels, alongside a few gleaming steel vats, a concession to modern times. Here, we met his mother Yvette Halbeisen, who told us how Alsace has hardly changed over the years, the vineyards remaining the focal point of their lives as it did for their forefathers. Aurelien spoke passionately about grapes and wines, of the back-breaking labour involved throughout the year tending to the grape-vines, the fluctuations in production, the vintages… Before we left, I asked Aurelien something that had been bothering me for quite a while. ‘Tell me’, I asked, in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘how do wine critics detect the bouquet/aroma of a hundred and one things — vanilla, apples, berries, honey — in a simple glass of wine? Where do all those fragrances come from?’ ‘Well’, he smiled, ‘the wine acquires its distinctive aroma from the kind of grape, the soil in which its grown – chalky or granite soils will produce entirely different aromas, the barrel in which it is fermented, the weather – a good summer means the sugars are concentrated in the grapes and finally, the hand of the wine grower. Now, taste the wine from this barrel – it’s a late harvest, ‘vendages tardives’ we call it. It’s still a bit cloudy, but I just know that it’s going to make a very special wine!’ The wine was indeed sublime, slipping down the throat smoothly, like molten gold! Alsace, clearly, was beginning to work its magic on us.

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