Blame it on Covid-Stir-Craziness, maybe. But back in…uh, March 2022 we drove across Germany to scope out some wines (some famous, some recommendations) and landscapes and stuff. It was a short trip — just a four day weekend — but we covered a fair amount of ground: from Regensburg to Zurich (just a pitstop to visit a pal), from there to Colmar (our home base), and back to Regensburg with a stop in Heidelberg (another pal to visit).
The first night at our B&B in Colmar (Villa Elyané), Florence, our innkeeper, recommended Le Fer Rouge, a restaurant at the main train station. There, our waiter recommended a Pinot Noir from Ginglinger-Fix. Long story, short:
- Ginglinger is a fairly common name in the region, and there are lots of wineries named similarly.
- You won’t find their wine in shops. Why? They don’t do retail. Their customers are restaurants and exporters, or — if you seek them out at home, like we did — individual consumers.
- We never would have found them at all without Florence, who called them and told them we wanted to come out for a tasting.
We hit a few little towns in the region, like Ribeauvillé and Eguisheim and Zellenberg/Riquewihr, and tried to make sure the Flammkuchen and choucroute was equally good in every place. Good news: it was! We brought at least a little wine back from everywhere we stopped: mostly whites, but also a few reds we liked.
On our way out of Colmar the last morning, we sought out the model Statue of Liberty. It’s there because the original’s sculptor, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, hailed from Colmar.
The pictures are all up over here for posterity. Here are a few of our favorites:
