Alsace Wine Tour – Hinsbourg to La Wantzenau

Previous day || Back to trip summary page. ¦¦ Next day

Hinsbourg to La Wantzenau

Another very hot night at the municipal camping site at Hinsbourg, 18° at 7:30 am, we are both feeling tired and weary from the heat even though we have not done very much.

After breakfast we sort out the Hymer and deal with all the usual housekeeping jobs, empty grey water, empty the toilet cassette, fill up with fresh water, tidy up and put away the table, chairs and things we have had outside. We are close to our destination, The Alsace Wine Route, under normal circumstances we would be filled with excitement at the prospect of visiting wine producers and sampling the wines on offer, this time is different, the heat is intense, too hot for us to enjoy what we are doing. We want to buy wine, that’s why we are here. We buy wine from smaller producers, that wine is not available in the UK because there is not enough for the big supermarkets. Generally it is much better than the mass produced branded wines or the wines sold by grape variety. It’s good to remember that in the UK when we pay £7.50 for a bottle of wine, £4.25 goes to the government, that’s 56% of the price. In France the duty on wine is 3p a bottle and then the VAT, so on a bottle at £7.50 on the supermarket shelf the French government takes £1.28, that’s 17%. The UK Government is just greedy, taxes on wines and spirits are far too high. What it means is that when we come to France we buy better wines for the same price, we like that a lot.

We are both sorry to leave Hinsbourg, but we need to move on. Our first wine stop is going to be Domaine Xavier Müller at Marlenheim, we called there previously and liked the wines. We leave at about 10:30 am and take a leisurely pace. At Marmoutier Gill spots a large E.Leclerc supermarket, and suggests we stop to buy more supplies. I’m always ready for that, I like wandering around looking at the different things available in France or wherever we are. This branch of E.leclerc is huge, we are over an hour and spend almost €100 on food and some more wines. We also find folding chairs with aluminium frames and good quality covers, €40 each, we buy two to replace our ancient chairs, one of which has split stitching. We have lunch while we are stopped, then press on to Xavier Müller’s winery. We are surprised how much development there has been at Marlenheim, it’s hard to find the small road that leads to the winery, but we eventually get there. No shade and we need to wait because the shop is closed until 2 pm.

When we enter the inside is cool, air conditioned, a young man comes and offers us a selection of wines to try. We both wonder what has happened to the older man whom we saw last time, we think the older man was Mr Müller, perhaps this is his son? The tasting is ok, the young man is helpful, but doesn’t have the experience or seem to care about the wines in the same way that his predecessor did, maybe wine appreciation is something that comes with age. We buy a selection of wines and crémant, 18 bottles in total, but it doesn’t feel quite the same as our first visit. We load up the wine into a side locker that we keep empty in readiness for such purchases and get on our way. The best aire we found was next to the river at La Wantzenau, so we drove there. A large car park outside the local hall used for weddings and similar functions. A row of trees, so there is shade at times. Very hot, unpleasantly hot, but we settle down and decide it’s too late in the day to be moving on and looking elsewhere.

We sit on the new chairs by the river watching a family of swans. Later in the evening we walk along the river, a very pleasant place to be. We find a flower border along the river that has all white flowers in it, someone has spent a lot of time and effort putting that together.