The fairytale French region that British tourists rarely visit

I met a fellow recently who had never been to Alsace. He’d been pretty much everywhere else – Bali, Sri Lanka, Ulaanbaatar, Peru – but not Alsace. “Get a grip,” I said. “Plodding around the planet, leaving a carbon footprint the size of a soccer pitch, when Colmar – Colmar! – is only a few hours from London by train, that’s madness.” And so it is. 

To be clear, Alsace is the most civilised slice of France, and the Colmar district its best bit. It is also – talk about having it all – the wine capital of the region. As such, it’s handy with food, too. Usually, lots of it. Eating and drinking moderately round here is feasible, but it’s a lonely endeavour. We’ll return to this. Elsewhere, almost everything is just right. High-hued, half-timbered buildings press in on slim streets. There are wrought iron signs bearing pigs and peasants outside shops and sculpted Renaissance fantasy all over the place. The Lauch river splits into narrow channels overhung with wooden terraces upon which smiling people eat and drink and, frankly, get a bit annoyed with the flat-bottomed tourist barques floating past at arm’s length, boatmen parroting a commentary.

But boatmen have a living to make, and a minor wrong highlights the right. Notice, please, that the whole happy cacophony – gables, galleries, courtyards, cobbled streets, river channels – is overcome with flowers to a gorgeous degree. There is, withal, a sense of ancestral prosperity, of decent blokes and apple-cheeked matrons working hard, planting seeds, eating amply and cutting loose at festival time.

And then there’s the sombre sub-plot rendering this present yet more precious. As everyone knows, Alsace took a kicking every time Europe came to blows, which was often. The region changed nationality – French to German and back again – four times in the 75 years to 1945. The fathers and grandfathers of French folk you see strolling Colmar were forced into the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. Villages just outside were flattened as US and French forces punctured the Colmar Pocket – the Nazis’ last stand west of the Rhine – in the freezing winter of 1944/45. “It’s all rather complicated,” said a senior chap with whom I shared a table at a mountain-top auberge. He wasn’t minded to say more – he’d lived and talked the subject to exhaustion – so we spoke of the return of wolves to the Vosges mountains. 

And of the roïgabregaldi we were both eating. It’s a mountain meal of spuds, onions, butter, lardons and smoked pork capable of fuelling farmers for a week. Alsace is gifted at this kind of brass band dish. Epic domesticity is a defence against the havoc of its history. So is gaiety. It is impossible to share roïgabregaldi, or a choucroute (the Alsacien sauerkraut, with its attendant cardiac arrest array of pork cuts) or the three-meat baeckeoffe stew and not feel that life’s looking chipper.

These days, we’re mainly richer than we were, so Alsacien food also gets fancied up for the carriage trade. They did it splendidly at the Echevin restaurant of Le Maréchal hotel. On the ancient covered terrace they served rabbit and duck liver in a muscat gelée, then a fillet of char way too delicate for anything as vulgar as an old man’s mouth. I ate it all the same.

At some later point, guide Louis-Philippe Feuerstein showed me round town. He knew everything. The knack here is to listen attentively when he, or anyone else, speaks of the travails of the 20th century but to be selective about earlier times. Alsace’s medieval and Renaissance past comprises an impenetrable thicket of counts, dukes, bishops, Holy Roman emperors, humanists, warriors, alliances and women wearing what appear to be large crows pinned to their hair. Madness is assured for all but the serious scholar.

Into the Vosges

Next day I scooted up the Vosges mountains via the Munster valley, the aromas of whose cheese can clear a county. The taste is milder – racy, somewhat voluptuous – and few do it better than Jean-Marc Lau at his farm in Hohrod, a village folded into the fells. You want the best cheese patter, Jean-Marc is your man. During free visits, he’ll tell you about his former bull, François and his new one, Emmanuel, who ignores younger females in favour of older ones. The entire herd is, he says, unionised. Cheese production requires negotiation. This works. The cheese is so good as to be transgressive. 

For summer, the Lau cows had trekked to the upland Vosges pastures, 1,200 metres high via hairpins and forest. With guide Nathalie, we followed, topping out at the Col de Schlucht. The road across these rounded heights, the Route des Crêtes, had been built in the Great War, that French front-line trenches might be supplied. Now, sunlit, it afforded startling views across grassland to the sky, down to rocks, woods and lakes and, in the distance, dots of hikers in (I hope) boots and sensible socks. Farm inns punctuated the landscape. They served marcaire (farmers’) meals like roïgabregaldi and an unmatchable Alsacien meat pie which indicated, once again, that when Alsaciens suggest light lunches, they’re lying. We had a rare old time on the Uff Rain inn’s terrace, the sky huge, the uplands uninterrupted, the conversation with table neighbours covering war, wolves and much else, and the food requiring serious compensatory exercise. So we walked all the way to the car park and drove off.

The wine route

Over coming days, I romped around the southern stretch of the Alsacien route des vins. Sinuous at the hinge of mountains and plain, this is the loveliest of wine roads. Vine fields heavy with pinot and riesling undulate down to village gates, round ramparts and up slopes topped by forest and castles enough for several decent scraps (see “thicket of counts, dukes, etc” above). Wine villages are so tenaciously preserved – as if nothing much has happened since the Renaissance – that you want to wind them up to see how they work, to accordion accompaniment. Or maybe lose the accordion. 

Riquewihr, certainly, seems in permanent preparation for a pageant. Though unfamiliar to Britons, it gets jolly crowded with French and German visitors. Village mayor, and wine-maker, Daniel Klack, is keen that people don’t just arrive, spend an hour ambling the main street and then clear off. He wants visitors to appreciate the place properly. They might, for instance, hire an electric scooter to scoot into the vineyards. Or drink his wine – the pinot gris is really something. Or eat the village’s own dish, the Riquewihrienne, which is choucroute finished with cream and eight herbs, thus a fetching shade of green. Flanked by sausages of goose, duck and pork... well, put it this way: I didn’t think it was possible to equal a classic choucroute but it seems I may be wrong. Head for Le Médiéval (55 Rue Général de Gaulle; le-medieval.fr). For wine and scooters, go to domainedelatourblanche.fr and Riqu’Eco Tours at ribeauville-riquewihr.com, respectively.

Nearby, Kaysersberg is equally arresting, overseen by perpendicular vineyards. It was voted France’s Favourite Village 2017 on a well-watched TV show. Oliver Nasti’s Chambard is the best hotel-restaurant in town, possibly in the whole of Alsace. Fortunately, the two Michelin-star restaurant was shut – that saved a bob or two – so we lunched in the attendant winstub, or brasserie: lightly, of course, on mountain trout, Vosges venison and a fruit tart the size of a frisbee. I left on all fours.

Third of the trio of villages, Eguisheim had been home to 11th-century pope Leo IX. Frankly, I’m on surer ground with wine. Eguisheim has some crackers, not least the Eichberg and Pferisberg grand crus. Try them at Leon Baur’s winery (leon-baur.com). Or repair to one of the former tithe courtyards now occupied by long-established family wineries: Vins Joseph Freudenreich is good. For a very few of euros, take a glass of something local, sit outside among gables, flowers and burnished medieval memories, and admit that your afternoon just got booked solid (joseph-freudenreich.fr). 

I was on a roll. Back in Colmar, I walked along to the Karcher winery, impressed that a full, working winery might still exist in the middle of a 70,000-strong town. But it does. There used to be many. Every courtyard denoted a wine family. There are two left, Karcher having recently passed to the latest generation, 20-something twins Pierre and Gilles. The winery tells Colmar’s story in barrels and stone, and the Riesling is straight, fruity and damnably more-ish (vins-karcher.com). I dined later at Le Fer Rouge, a concentration of conviviality and Alsacien dishes – why had no-one before introduced me to fleischnakas meat-stuffed noodles? – and wandered into the night. Low lights on bar terraces were sufficient for happiness, of which there was plenty. They cast light and shadows flattering flowers and façades, so that buildings and waterways were as much suggested as seen. There was a guitarist singing Elvis at the Café de l’Ancienne Douane and unexpected squares round every corner, alive with hubbub. Centuries of strife, wine, food and laughter had led to this. You haven’t been to Colmar? I’ll keep on mentioning it until you have.

How to do it

Train it from St Pancras, via Paris, in around six hours (sncf.com/en). Stay at the 16th-century Le Maréchal squeezed in, with almost excessive picturesqueness, along the river channel in a riot of flowers, half-timbering and colour. Within, it’s like staying with a minor noble. Standards are four-star, staff terrific and the restaurant first class (Place des Six Montagnes Noires; 0033 389 416032; hotel-le-marechal.com).

Note that Anthony’s visit was before the pandemic and many of the venues listed are currently affected by coronavirus-related closures. Overseas holidays will be possible again after May 17, and France is currently open to UK visitors who show evidence of a negative Covid test. 

The five best restaurants

L’Echevin (lace des Six Montagnes Noires; 0033 389 416032; hotel-le-marechal.com). Friendly, gastronomic restaurant of the flower- and history-laden Maréchal hotel.

Fer Rouge (52 Grand’Rue; 0033 389 208069; leferrouge.alsace). Maybe the jolliest brasserie in town.

Atelier du Peintre (1 Rue Schongauer; 0033 389 295157). Startlingly good, Michelin-starred spot run by young French couple who once operated a gastro-restaurant in Inverness. “Gastronomy? Inverness?” I said. “I’d no idea they’d got knives and forks up there.” They fed me all the same, and brilliantly.

Uff Rain (Route de Schnepfenried, Metzeral; 0033 389 776768; vallee-munster.eu). Completely renewed, chalet style, in 2019, my pick of Munster Valley mountain inns.

Chambard (Rue Général-de-Gaulle, Kaysersberg; 0033 389 471017; lechambard.fr). Olivier Nasti’s two-Michelin star main restaurant is among the French gastrocracy with prices to match – but the associated winstub/brasserie is pretty fab, too.

• Reader Service: View our pick of the best France tours