DESTINATIONS SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL | FRANCE


TRIED & TESTED


Hotel & Spa Barr


Stylishly converted from a


cluster of 16th-century buildings, this 27-room MGallery


Collection hotel overlooks the half-timbered buildings of a


pretty square. Beamed ceilings hint at the hotel’s heritage, but elsewhere the decor has a contemporary vibe along


with tan leather armchairs and black-and-white photographs.


There’s an excellent restaurant and a spa, plus wine tastings in the hotel’s well-stocked cellar. Rooms from £180 room-only.


THE BARR’S OPEN The only other people I passed in Barr, albeit on a rather damp afternoon, were a handful of locals chatting on one of the town’s pretty squares and an elderly lady lovingly tending to the geraniums in her window box. Even my accommodation, the chic 5 Terres Hotel &


L’Esquisse Hotel & Spa


Colmar


Set within a pretty, tree-filled park less than 10 minutes’ walk from the town centre, the modern, 62-room


L’Esquisse Hotel & Spa – MGallery Collection exudes glamour. Rooms are spacious and elegant with parquet flooring and contemporary decor. There’s also a spa and a two-Michelin-starred restaurant, the brainchild of star local chef Jean


Yves Schillinger. Rooms from £225 room-only. mgallery.accor.com


Spa, part of the Accor-owned MGallery Collection, wasn’t overly busy. Its name draws on Alsace’s five types of terroir, the combination of soil and climate that gives each area’s wine a unique character. It was a similarly sleepy story in the wine-growing


village of Mittelbergheim, just five minutes’ drive south, which was surprising given it has been voted one of France’s most beautiful villages. Sitting high on a headland amid even more vineyards, like Barr, Mittelbergheim’s handful of streets were lined with wooden-shuttered, 16th-century houses in shades of dusky pink and primrose yellow with swirling, black ironwork shop signs jutting out from the facades. I had come to visit Boeckel, one of the many wineries in the village (tours and tastings €20-€25). In between giant wooden barrels in the cellar and the pleasantly musty aroma of wine and oak, owner Thomas Boeckel explained that they have been making wine in his family for 500 years, as I tasted wines including a deliciously mellow, floral gewurtztraminer.


GOOD VINTAGE In fact, wine-making in the Alsace region dates back to Roman times, a history that enthusiastic oenophiles can


48 26 JUNE 2025


33Colmar’s photogenic ‘Little Venice’ area was supposedly the inspiration for the French village in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast


delve into at the fascinating Wine Museum (admission €15) in the nearby town of Colmar, with interactive displays and holograms to bring the wine story to life. Wine, however, is not Colmar’s only claim to fame.


The town’s photogenic ‘Little Venice’ area, filled with canals and bridges and lined with half-timbered houses, was supposedly the inspiration for the 18th-century French village in Disney’s 1991 animated film Beauty and the Beast. Others come for the 12m-high replica of New York’s Statue of Liberty, which stands on the edge of town in homage to its creator, sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi, who was born in Colmar. At the town’s Unterlinden Museum (admission €14), I found not only works by Picasso, Rodin, Renoir and Monet, but also the renowned ‘Isenheim’ altarpiece, widely considered to be one of the masterpieces of 16th-century art.


Perhaps unsurprisingly given its many draws, unlike in Barr and Mittelbergheim, I was no longer the lone tourist in town. Visitors from Japan, Italy and other regions of France sat alongside as the Petit Train


² travelweekly.co.uk 5 Terres


CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Barr vineyards; Colmar; L’Esquisse Hotel & Spa


PICTURES: Alsace Tourism/Bartosch Salmanski; David Grimbert; Shutterstock/Sina Ettmer Photography; Serge Lohner


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