The Alsace wine road

Seventy villages, one road through the vines, and a cellar door open in every one of them.

A wine trip through Germany, France and the Netherlands — 5 days and about 675 km. It is built around 4 places the trip exists to include, all in France: Riquewihr, Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg (a castle), Eguisheim and Colmar. Those are kept whatever else you change; the nights, the meals and the stops in between are chosen for the road you actually end up on.

The Route des Vins runs for 170 km along the foot of the Vosges, and it is less a road than a string of villages: Riquewihr, Kaysersberg, Eguisheim, each one a ring of timbered houses round a church, each one with growers pouring Riesling and Gewurztraminer from the slope you can see out of the window. You taste, you buy a bottle, you walk to the next one. Alsace is the part of France that ate German cooking, so the food is tarte flambée, choucroute and Munster cheese, and the wine is white and dry and made to go with it. Colmar is the town to sleep in — canals, a covered market, and the Isenheim altarpiece if you want one great painting on the trip. Above it all sits Haut-Kœnigsbourg, a castle rebuilt by the Kaiser and worth the hairpins for the view alone. Late September and October are the harvest, when the villages are busiest and best. Most cellars close over lunch; taste in the morning, drive in the afternoon, and let one person stay on the water.

The places this trip exists for

Pinned, not suggested — the planner is required to include every one of them.

Riquewihr
🇫🇷 France
The village on every postcard, inside its sixteenth-century walls with the vines up to the gate.
Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg
castle · 🇫🇷 France
The castle above the whole plain, rebuilt by Wilhelm II a century ago and still the best view in Alsace.
Eguisheim
🇫🇷 France
Concentric lanes round a castle, and growers' courtyards you walk straight into.
Colmar
🇫🇷 France
The canals of Little Venice and the covered market — the base for the whole road.

These are kept whatever you change. Everything else the planner picks is chosen for the road you end up on, and can be swapped.

Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg — Gzen92 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Colmar — --sinava-- from Berlin · CC BY 2.0

One way it works out

From Amsterdam · 5 days · about €848

A real plan, priced the way every trip here is: fuel per country you cross, tolls and vignettes from published tariffs, beds and food from derived local rates. It is one example, not an average — from another town it is a different trip, which is the point of the button below.

Get a picture of this trip to share

All 4 pinned places are kept — you set the start, the days and who's coming, and the road and the figures are worked out for your door.

The figures above were measured from Amsterdam — yours will differ.