Luxury hotel holidays to Alsace

Each gives a quite different holiday, and many of our clients combine two of them. Strasbourg is a substantial European city, seat of the European Parliament, with a historic centre on the Grande Île recognised by UNESCO; it suits clients who enjoy walking to museums, restaurants and the cathedral, and our hotels here include the Hotel & Spa Régent Petite France, set in a historic building on the canals of the Petite France quarter, Les Haras in the same district, the Hotel Régent Contades in a nineteenth-century sandstone residence a short walk from the cathedral, and the Hotel Léonor, a restored eighteenth-century building arranged around a large central courtyard. Colmar, an hour to the south, is smaller and more intimate, with its canals, half-timbered merchants’ houses and the Musée Unterlinden, and it makes an excellent base for the southern part of the Wine Road; the Grand Hotel Bristol, opposite the station, is ideal for clients arriving by train. The villages of the Wine Road itself, such as Ribeauvillé, Riquewihr, Kaysersberg and Eguisheim, are where Alsace is at its most characteristic, and staying among the vineyards allows you to enjoy them in the early morning and evening, when the day visitors have gone. Le Clos Saint Vincent, a small hotel above Ribeauvillé with views across the vines to the Rhine plain, and the Château d’Isenbourg, a château-hotel set on a hill among the vineyards at Rouffach, both offer this. A few nights in Strasbourg followed by a stay on the Wine Road is a combination that works particularly well, and the distances are short enough to make it effortless.

It is a rewarding and notably welcoming wine region to visit. Unlike Burgundy, where many estates receive visitors only by introduction, a large number of Alsace’s family domaines have their own tasting cellars in the villages, and an unhurried day on the Wine Road, which runs for some 170 kilometres along the foothills of the Vosges, can include several visits without advance planning. We can nevertheless arrange private tastings with growers whose wines are not widely exported, guided vineyard walks and sessions with a specialist guide. Alsace is unusual in France in labelling its wines by grape variety, and the four principal varieties, Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris and Muscat, each express the region’s 51 Grand Cru vineyards in their own way, from bone-dry Rieslings to the rich late-harvest Vendanges Tardives and Sélection de Grains Nobles wines; Crémant d’Alsace is a serious sparkling wine in its own right. The food is as distinctive as the wine, combining French refinement with a Germanic generosity: choucroute, baeckeoffe, tarte flambée, foie gras, Munster cheese and kougelhopf, best enjoyed in a traditional winstub. Alsace also has an unusually high concentration of Michelin-starred restaurants for its size, and we are happy to advise on and book the restaurants that suit your taste, from village winstubs to the great tables of the region.

Alsace has changed hands between France and Germany four times since 1871, and that layered history is visible everywhere, in its architecture, its language, its food and its sense of its own identity. Strasbourg Cathedral, built in pink Vosges sandstone, has a spire that made it the tallest building in the world for more than two centuries, and an astronomical clock whose present mechanism dates from 1843; the Palais Rohan and the Musée de l’Œuvre Notre-Dame, with its medieval sculpture and stained glass, are close by, and the German-built Neustadt district, added to the UNESCO listing in 2017, shows a quite different side of the city. In Colmar, the Musée Unterlinden houses the Isenheim Altarpiece, painted by Matthias Grünewald between 1512 and 1516, a central work of the northern Renaissance and a reason in itself to visit. The castle of Haut-Koenigsbourg, rebuilt on the orders of Kaiser Wilhelm II at the start of the twentieth century, overlooks the Rhine plain from the Vosges, and the convent of Mont Sainte-Odile and the ruined castles above Ribeauvillé and Eguisheim add a more romantic note. Kaysersberg was the birthplace of Albert Schweitzer, and the First World War memorial and battlefield of the Hartmannswillerkopf, high in the southern Vosges, is a sobering reminder of the region’s position on the frontier. The Route des Crêtes along the summits of the Vosges offers walking and wide views, and we can arrange private guides in Strasbourg and Colmar and plan the touring so that each day has a natural rhythm.

Alsace is easily reached by rail, which for many clients is the most comfortable way to arrive. Eurostar connects in Paris with TGV services from the Gare de l’Est to Strasbourg in under two hours, and on to Colmar, so the whole journey from London can be made in a single day, with a hire car or private transfer arranged at the station if you plan to tour the Wine Road. Our rail holiday combining Paris, Strasbourg and Lyon shows how well the region fits into a longer journey by train. The most convenient airport is the EuroAirport at Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, which has direct flights from the UK and lies around forty-five minutes from Colmar. For clients who prefer to drive, Strasbourg is about six hours from Calais by motorway, and an overnight stop in Champagne makes the journey more leisurely. A car is the most practical way to explore the Wine Road and the Vosges, while Strasbourg and Colmar are best enjoyed on foot. Alsace sits at the crossroads of Europe and combines naturally with its neighbours: Champagne and Burgundy for a tour of the vineyard regions of eastern France, the Black Forest and Baden-Baden just across the Rhine in Germany, Lorraine and Nancy to the west, and Switzerland to the south, where Basel connects with the Swiss rail network for Lucerne, the Bernese Oberland and beyond. We will advise on the combination and pace that suit the length of your holiday.

Alsace has a continental climate, with cold winters averaging around 5°C in January and warm summers averaging around 26°C in August, and because the Vosges shelter it from westerly weather, the Wine Road around Colmar is one of the driest parts of France. Late April to June is a lovely time to visit, with blossom in the orchards, the vines coming into leaf and the storks, the emblem of the region, nesting on the village rooftops. July and August are warm and lively, with wine festivals in many villages, though the best-known places such as Riquewihr and Eguisheim are busy in the middle of the day. September and October are, for many of our clients, the most rewarding months: the harvest is under way, the vineyards turn gold and red, the temperatures are ideal for walking and the new wine, served with onion tart, appears in the winstubs. The Christmas markets, from late November until Christmas Eve, are a tradition of real character in Alsace, with Strasbourg’s Christkindelsmärik dating back to 1570, and the illuminated villages and towns are genuinely atmospheric. They are also very popular, and our advice is to visit on weekdays, to combine a stay in Strasbourg with smaller markets such as those in Kaysersberg, Ribeauvillé or Colmar, and to book early, as hotels for December weekends often fill a year in advance. January to March is the quietest time of year, with some hotels and restaurants closing for a period. We will always advise on timing in relation to your interests and the hotels you are considering.