Alsace, by glass


Discover a more peaceful alternative to better-known grape-growing regions with a tour of France’s oldest wine route, writes Eddi Fiegel


DESTINATIONS FRANCE | SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL


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Barr village, Alsace PICTURE: Shutterstock/Simon Dannhauer


travelweekly.co.uk


here are no prizes for guessing the number-one industry in the small Alsatian


town of Barr, just half-an-hour’s drive west of France’s border with Germany. At the end of each steeply sloping, cobbled street – beyond the half-timbered houses that look like they’ve sprung to life from a Brothers Grimm fairytale – vineyards stretch up high on a hill behind the town, like a lush, living wall. Some 230 miles east of Paris, Barr is just one of 119 wine-growing towns in the area. Back in 1953, the Alsace tourist board cottoned on to the fact that they might have something that could be of interest to visitors and created what is now France’s oldest wine route. Unlike the superstar wine regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy, however, which attract tourists in their millions every year, Alsace’s Wine Route is still relatively unexplored.²


26 JUNE 2025


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