Alsace Wine Route

Over the past 50 years, the Alsace Wine Route has contributed to the success of Alsace wines. It has become famous all over the world for the exceptional natural beauty of its scenery, for being easy to follow, and for the way it makes the visitor feel close to the region and its wine-growers.

The Alsace Wine Route winds its way from North to South, for more than 170 kilometres (105 miles), along the eastern foothills of the Vosges. This delightful itinerary runs across a succession of undulating hills, through pretty villages with narrow streets of flower-decked, half-timbered houses, clustered around their church steeple.

Visitors can easily explore the heart of the vineyards, along numerous vineyard paths leading to the crest of each slope, where signs explain the work of the wine-grower and the diversity of the grape varieties. They are welcomed into winstubs and tasting cellars to instantly discover the traditional appeal of the vine and the wine.

Sheltered from oceanic influence by the Vosges mountains, the Alsace wine region enjoys practically the lowest rainfall in France (only 400-500 mm per year) and is blessed with a semi-continental climate, sunny, hot and dry. Situated on the sub-Vosgian foothills, at an altitude from 200 to 400 metres, the vineyards take maximum advantage of their exposure to the sun, particularly as the vines are trained along high wires.

These specific advantages of the Alsace vineyards favourise the slow, extended ripening of the grapes, giving wines with very elegant, complex aromas. The geology of Alsace is a real mosaic of soils, made up of granite, limestone, gneiss, schist, sandstone… Such a wide variety of soils, covering about 37,000 acres (15,000 hectares), helps to bring out the finest characteristics of each grape variety, while the imprint of a particular terroir gives each Alsace wine its individuality, complexity and own unique hallmark.