We tasted one sparkling red wine, a Muscat, three Rieslings and a Gewurz Traminer. David is the white wine drinker in our family and he tends to like the medium sweet wines. His favorite was probably the wine made with the later-harvested grapes called vendanges tardives. But in my opinion, after the first glass, the couple from Ohio (Linda and Mike -- yes, we were becoming best friends) and I LOVED them all! We were provided with a bucket so we could throw away the wine we didn't like but noooooo, we all drank it all. The last time I saw David he was trying to get French girls to dance on the table! Ha!
Jean-Claude had to leave us for awhile to drive the women from Spain back to the Colmar train station so he organized lunch for Linda, Mike, David and me at a traditional Alsatian restaurant. We were directed to eat lunch and then explore the town. Instead the four of us spent two hours at lunch eating and sobering up for a later wine tasting session!
Linda and Mike live in Ohio and he is a retired dentist. They have four kids -- some live in Ohio near them and some live in Chicago. They visited Chicago so often they decided to buy a condo there. Here's the interesting part, they registered at www.homeaway.com and arranged a home exchange this year. They spent the first two weeks of their vacation living in a nice apartment in Paris while the Paris residents lived in their home in Chicago! David and I have thought about doing this but haven't been brave enough. Yet! Mike and Linda said everything worked out great for them and they will definitely do it again.
OK, let's continue. Jean-Claude picked us up and we drove to Kaysersberg. This is where Albert Schweitzer was born and lived a short time before he made a fortune which enabled he and his wife to help people in undeveloped countries (Africa and others). His museum is located in this small town. It is another beautiful town with many shops. Also, many French fighters are buried in town as a result of Kaysersburg's liberation in December 1944 during WW II. David and I treated ourselves to ice cream there.
We stopped in Therese Bonney and Jean-Claude pointed out a huge storks' nest. I was fascinated by it!!! There were two storks in the nest (that we could see). I think they were resting after delivering baby Colton to Karin and Brandon Salata!!! Seriously, I've never seen a stork's nest or a stork before, so I took a bunch of pictures of them. Sure hope they come out!
Next up was the town of Turckheim. It was first mentioned in 743 as a wine growing site. In 1312 it acquired the status of a town. The Thirty Years' War was a harsh time for the town and it had to be rebuilt in the beginning of the 18th century. This is where we had our second wine tasting. Here we tasted the wines of winemaker Edouard Leiber. We started with a very dry, sparkling white wine and worked our way up to the fruitiest or sweetest wine. We tasted L'Ambassadeur, a couple of Reislings and four Pinot Gris, once again not wasting a drop! We tried wines that were made from late harvest grapes which David liked and unlike the previous wine tasting, David liked the sweetest Pinot Gris that to him was a better wine than the earlier, less sweet wines from this winemaker. After this wine tasting we were all more than ready to head back but Jean-Claude wasn't through with us yet.
He took us to Equisheim -- another gorgeous small town. It distinguishes itself because it was named the best small village in France by French people in a survey that was conducted last year. It was so charming David expected Pinocchio to come bounding down the street!
Jean-Claude returned us to the train station at 6:30 p.m. It was a long, wonderful day filled with sites of the most beautiful, charming French towns you can imagine. We returned to
Strasbourg tired but happy. We did not want to go out for a long dinner so on the way from the train station to the hotel we stopped at a store for David to buy cheese and crackers for his dinner and a to-go pasta place where I got macaroni in meat sauce. Just what we wanted!
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