The morning after our Academie des Bières excursion, we awoke painfully early, packed up our things in our surprisingly nice hotel rooms (have I mentioned CUPA spoils us? Because they do), scarfed down one of those typical hotel continental breakfasts, and loaded up into the bus. Where were we off to? Well, at that point we weren't entirely sure, but a quick consultation of our itineraries informed us that we were headed to the château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg and to the town of Obernai.
The Château du Haut-Kœnigsbourg - "Bien plus qu'un monument," as its brochure promised - was built in the 12th century, restored under the direction of Emperor Wilhelm II at the beginning of the 20th (obviously before France got Alsace back), and was everything a medieval castle should be!
Here are a few glimpses why, taken as I wandered up and down curving stone steps, long hallways, and peered over turret ledges...
If I had been in the mood, I might have tried to capture these steps in a way that paid homage to Frederick Evans' well-known photograph "A Sea of Steps"...
Medieval Starbucks? Granddad, I thought of you...
Ceiling of the great hall...
Exactly the kind of chandelier you would expect Teutonic knights to eat under...
I named this area off the great hall "the breakfast nook"...
Why, of course I have a large stuffed dragon hanging over my breakfast nook - don't you?
The classic and obligatory wild boar's head:
Trophy wall! It was actually much more extensive than I could even capture with my camera...
View from the top:
Pious, and the perfect shape for shooting arrow without getting hit by incoming ones...
Then it was back to the buses for the last stop on our journey: the town of Obernai, where we would have our dégustation and initiation aux vins d'Alsace (wine tasting and introduction to the wines of Alsace).
Obernai was a quaint French-German mix, like a tiny Strasbourg, but otherwise unremarkable. My stomach growled as we passed countless bakeries tempting me with authentic bretzels, and I hoped I would be able to survive wine tasting on an empty stomach...
Our sommelier for the afternoon was quite the character: well-dressed, fastidious, well-versed in both history and geology, passionate about protecting the authenticity of wines (he's the kind of person you never mention a California champagne to!), and profoundly poetic in his descriptions of the white wines we had the pleasure of encountering that day.
Okay, time to reveal one of my goals for my time here in France: become a wine snob. Since I'm 21 now, I can return to the US and put this newfound knowledge to good use, and forever eschew classless American college-style drinking.
So though I felt rather ridiculous holding my glass by the foot (not the stem), tipping the glass to watch how the legs (larmes, or "tears" in French) dripped, sniffing, swirling, and sucking the wine into my mouth with a strange sound (this is meant to further aerate the wine and bring out more flavors)...I did all those things. And though it may have been totally psychological, I really do think I could taste and differentiate the lemon, grapefruit, passionfruit, pineapple, black tea, jasmine, and sea salt that the sommelier identified in each of the three wines we sampled.
We then proceeded into the restaurant, where a lovely menu awaited us:
Once again, the decision was pretty much made for me (other than dessert), but no complaints here! Still, I snapped a picture of S.'s foie gras with mango chutney for you (since my mesclun salad, though delicious, was less photogenic):
The vegetarian main course at this restaurant was much more normal: a delicate arrangement of vegetables, mushrooms, and potato purée:
(the green vegetable in the middle was like a cross between broccoli and cauliflower - yum!)
Oh, and did I mention that the sommelier personally came around to each table and poured each of us a different wine for each of the three courses? Here's one of them:
When it came to dessert, we were all expecting the kougelhofpf glacé to be a glazed kougelhopf, or a kougelhopf filled with ice cream. What were not expecting was ice cream shaped like a kougelhopf, and filled with rum!
I love ice cream, I love rum, and I love raspberry sauce, but this was not my cup of tea!
Luckily, I had switched orders with someone so that I could get the assiette tout chocolat, which I was expecting to be an assortment of truffles. Once again, we were surprized:
Chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, and chocolate ice cream - now that, I can live with!
We finished off the meal with coffee and a dish of smaller, humbler sweets - including marshmallows and fruit pâté (the gelly, sugar-encrusted squared in the middle).
Then it was back to the bus and back to Strasbourg to catch the train back to Paris. Au revoir, Alsace!
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