A Glass of Alsace

So few of these wines come to Britain or the United States that it is worth making a trip to Alsace simply to discover them. This is easier than you might think. A fast train will whisk you from Paris to Strasbourg in under two hours. And Strasbourg is one of those ancient cities that reward noodling: where the natural pace of walking around the narrow, cobbled streets and stopping in for a pastry or a glass of something restorative makes every day feel like Sunday. The place to stay is on the central island; the ring of the river Ill makes it feel as if you are in a moated castle. There is something magical about crossing the numerous bridges, especially at night when they are dramatically lit: dusky purple or fiery red under the arches.

The bridges of Strasbourg [Sara Lodge]

The stonework of the medieval towers is picked out in white. Both by day and by night, Strasbourg Cathedral is astonishing. From a distance, you see only its hollowed-out, rocket-shaped spire, like that of a medieval Chrysler Building. Then you round a corner and—bang. There it is. A massive, jaw-dropping Gothic fantasy of pinnacles, flying buttresses, openwork arches, and stained glass. Think of scrimshaw work in whalebone, its obsessively whittled detail. Then magnify it to the size of a whale. I kept happening upon this building during the week I spent in Strasbourg, and each time I saw it I was taken aback.

Strasbourg Cathedral, completed in 1439, was for two centuries the world’s tallest building. [Sara Lodge]

There is much else to admire. Strasbourg is very near the border with Germany, so it is no surprise that many of the oldest buildings look Germanic; they consist of plaster and timber, crossed like bootlaces on the façades, whose wooden gables are also carved with decorative figures. Elaborately wrought metal signs dangle invitingly from shopfronts: a pig, a golden goose, a bunch of grapes. These point to regional specialties: charcuterie, foie gras, wines, and eau de vie.

[Sara Lodge]

If James Bond had come from Strasbourg, his motto would have been “Diet another day.” Alsatian food is rich, rustic, and tasty. You can eat it in a fine-dining restaurant like Kammerzell near the cathedral, where the vaulted ceiling and walls of a glorious 15th-century building are painted with murals from 1904 of sailing ships and climbing vines. The windows are mullioned with panes the shape of the bottom of a wine bottle. Or you can eat it in a Winstub—a wine bar—like Fink’Stuebel, with a pumpkin on the bar and dried hops and herbs hanging from the rafters. But the food will be broadly similar. Ham knuckle with cabbage and potato salad flavored with horseradish. Pork and prunes. Choucroute. Chicken in a sauce of Riesling, cream, mushrooms, and tiny pickling onions. Onion tart served with a green salad flavored with walnut oil. Pastry is as essential to the cuisine here as pasta is to Italian food. It is filled with everything from veal to sausage, from cheese to cherries.

A visit to the salon de thé of Christian Meyer, the poshest pâtissier in Strasbourg, is enjoyably naughty. Here eclairs and kougelhopfs vie with confections made of raspberries, physalis, and chocolate in a huge glass case like a jeweler’s window. The chairs are purple velvet and lime green and there are surreal paintings of zebras escaping into human form; the waitresses wear latex tailcoats. It is the mad hatter’s tea party as redesigned by Christian Lacroix. In the downstairs shop there is a wonderful array of marzipan autumn fruits: acorns, conkers, toadstools, plums, and pears.

[Sara Lodge]

The sense of style here is inimitably French—no country is better at window dressing, at the boutique, the bijou or the bonbon. But the streets also feel German. Many of the buildings could be made out of gingerbread, which is also a popular local product. I had wondered if the bitter history of this region of France, which was annexed by Germany in 1871 and again during the Nazi occupation, would mean that German culture was vilified. But most inhabitants speak both French and German. They seem relaxed, or at least phlegmatic, about belonging to a region that has more than one cultural identity.

This is particularly apparent, of course, as Strasbourg is one of the homes of the European parliament. I attended a plenary session to see its debates in action. The parliament building with its “hemicycle” meeting chamber is designed to create a sense of unity in diversity, but it could learn a thing or two from Strasbourg Cathedral in this regard. It is gray. You step into an outdoor atrium, like the center of a cored apple, with some 15 curved stories of offices around it and a small model globe in the middle. Like all such spaces these days, it is unfortunately full of unhappy-looking people having a cigarette. Penetrating the secure zone, you pass through a space where cheeseplants have been trained up cables to create a vertical jungle. Then you are in the working area, looking out on the Ill, rather as you look out at the East River from United Nations headquarters in New York.

There are 751 elected members of the European parliament. But at the session I viewed, only around 30 of them were present. It was a curious experience. The public gallery, in the glassed-in upper circle of a vast royal-blue and white amphitheater, contained some 200 people like me: tourists, teachers, schoolchildren. And below us were a handful of delegates, debating a motion on the Environmental Liability Directive. They discussed polluted air and groundwater, exploding nuclear reactors, and oil spills from freighters in the Aegean; all these problems cross national lines. Listening to the speakers, their words simultaneously translated into English through headphones, I was convinced by their arguments for strengthening European accords on protecting the environment. Yet creating meaningful legal instruments and financial protocols that all 28 member states will respect is like trying to get 751 people to tap-dance in unison. Several of the MEPs present left during the proceedings, an ominous echo of Brexit and other recent talk of exits from the European Union itself.

The European parliament building. [Flickr/Cédric Puisney (CC BY 2.0)]

When international relations depress you, the Route des Vins is the road to renewed optimism. It wanders through the wine-lands of Alsace, passing through vineyards striped and golden in the late autumn sunshine. The Vosges mountains form a richly forested backdrop to the west, smoky blue with distance. There are ruined castles and picture-postcard villages, like Riquewihr, which is almost painfully quaint. Goldfish swim in ancient wells. Storks’ nests surmount the roofs of buildings, sometimes supported by a kind of metal cakestand to encourage the birds’ return in spring. Scarlet geraniums tumble from the window boxes of medieval timber houses, while the oldest churches seem to have sequins for roof-tiles, interlaced diamond patterns of gold and green.

One of the finest spots on the Route des Vins is Colmar, a large town that offers more varied pleasures than some of its smaller neighbors. There are street markets of antiquities where you can pick up medals from the Franco-Prussian War, art nouveau desk lamps, 19th-century soup tureens, and sepia photographs of lost relations, some with walrus mustaches and spiked helmets of the kind seemingly designed to pop enemy airships. You could furnish a whole Wes Anderson movie with this quirky bric-a-brac.

Colmar also boasts two major art museums. One is a converted convent, the Unterlinden, which displays Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece among other treasures of early art. I loved the stone cloisters of the convent and could have sat there quietly for hours. But the altarpiece is an unsettling experience, like the album cover for a 16th-century hard rock band. St. Anthony is tormented by demons with the heads of birds, Christ looks anorexic, and Mary is a glowing, tortured ghost.

The Isenheim Altarpiece [Flickr/Harry Alverson (CC BY-SA 2.0)]

I preferred the Bartholdi Museum. This is in a cozy 19th-century family house, with twisting wooden stairs and a living room with a piano. It displays some of the less-famous works by this French sculptor, some of which shed historical light on his most famous creation, the Statue of Liberty. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi served as an officer in the Franco-Prussian War and was distraught by the French defeat and the annexation of Alsace. His powerful statue The Curse of Alsace depicts a grieving woman beside the dead body of her son, raising her finger to indict his killers. Another striking maquette is of the huge Lion of Belfort—a noble, maned beast who is recumbent but bristling, defying an unseen aggressor. It is not hard to see the anger and battered national pride in Bartholdi’s work. His sculpture is shaped by the bitter experience of dispossession. Looking again at the Statue of Liberty—titled by Bartholdi Liberty Enlightening the World—I see echoes of the defiant mother-figure in it, combined with Christ wearing his crown of thorns, and the traditional figure of Justice pointing a sword at heaven. This American icon reflects the war-torn legacy of Alsatian history.

Predictably, the best day of my holiday was spent with a glass in hand. I interviewed the winemaker Etienne Sipp, proprietor of Louis Sipp, a firm that has been making fine wine here since 1918. I wanted to understand why Alsatian wine tastes so distinctive: poles apart from its French neighbors Champagne and Burgundy, and different from its German cousins. To explain, Sipp took me to a point high on his Kirchberg vineyard. The view was panoramic. Only crickets and church bells in the valley below broke the silence. A hawk sat, unruffled, on a telegraph wire beside us. “The geology of this area is unique,” he smiled, looking down over his patrimony with loving eyes. “It’s like a piano keyboard: The rock and soil have so many different characters.”

“Over there”—he gestured to the forested hills—“is the Osterberg. Granite and gneiss. Grapes grown there have a mineral character, with taut acidity. People compare the taste to that of a lemon pressed against a stone. Here on the Kirchberg, there is chalk and sedimentary rock. It produces grapes that are mellower, more floral and fruity. With so many notes to strike, a good winemaker here can make a great wine even in a bad year.”

Sipp explained that the local climate was also unique; a katabatic wind sweeps the valley, giving cool nights, and the angle of the sun on these slopes favors a gradual journey to ripeness in which fresh acidity, relatively high viscosity, and intense flavors are retained. Like many local proprietors Sipp grows organically, avoiding chemicals that harden the grapes’ skin. Lastly, his grapes are handpicked and pressed incredibly gently and slowly, over 16 hours, to produce wine as delicate as perfume. Whatever he does, it works. Golden in the glass, his 2001 Osterberg Riesling is a masterpiece of harmony: crisp and honeyed, long and orchard-scented. When I am recalling the scenery of autumn in Alsace it will be better than a photograph.

Sara Lodge is a senior lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews.