A Walk in the Wine

In spite of the return of cold and wet weather on Friday, we had a very nice day today.  Luckily, while the cold and clouds remained, the rain itself stopped.  Our plans involved being out of doors most of the day, so we were happy.

Today was the Panorama Wandern through the vineyards of Dittlesheim, including our very favourite one, Uwe Spies (if you are reading this from within Germany and ever have the chance, I highly recommend stopping by for some excellent wine at very reasonable prices!).

http://www.weingut-spies.de/index.html

The way the "hike" works is that the vintners get together and plan a route through the fields that makes a loop.  Each vintner has a tent or hut on their own property from which they serve wine samples and tasty treats.  There are small signs, or arrows to guide people on the walk, and everyone (of all ages) comes out to stroll out in the fresh air and enjoy delicious food and drink.

Today's outing included myself, David and Marika and along the way we picked up our friend Joachim.  We parked the car at the sport field in town, as recommended by the Spieses, and headed up the street to join in on the loop at the edge of town.  We knew we were on the right street when we found the first sign pointing the way (very necessary today as a section of the route was changed last night due the very wet weather, some of the low lying fields were nearly impassable).

We had only been walking about 10 minutes when the first tent came into view:

We started with our favourite--Uwe Spies Weingut, and had some wine and pretzels served by their son David.  

After about a half hour of good drinks and good company, we headed out towards the next tent.  This has been a cold spring and that means that the vines haven't greened up at all yet.  They are 3 or so weeks behind the norm this year (and I am sure this weekend's weather didn't help!).  It was still pretty out though:

Here we are some photos at the second tent, where we were delighted to find a wine we really enjoyed (enough that we bought a bottle to bring home), with the rather humorous name "The Womanizer."  Note that at 16 Marika is not breaking any laws at all drinking wine here (the drinking age in Germany is 16 for wine and beer and 18 for other alcohol).

The rest of the day was much the same.  Walk about a kilometer.  Stop for a drink and/or a snack.  Walk again.  Stop again.  Very relaxing!

All in all we walked about 7-8 Kilometers today, ate several delightful things (the plate of locally made cheeses shown above was the highlight) and drank samples about a dozen wines between us.  I only had a half a glass of "The Womanizer" and a few small sips of some of the others Dave tried; I needed to drive us home!  (Marika is old enough to drink here, but not to drive.)

There seems to be one of these walks at some nearby location just about every Sunday between now and late fall.  It is a fantastic way to spend a few hours on a Sunday afternoon (and very much a family event, lots of young children were out today).  I imagine you will see me blogging about another one soon!

Happy Sunday to all,

-Hadley