Sauntering through the vineyards

The sky was still mostly blue when a few cheeky raindrops hit the leaves of the grapevine arbor high in the hills above the Rhine River in southwest Germany.

The arbor covered two wooden benches where my friends and I were sampling a 2023 Spätburgunder rosé, also known as pinot noir. The grapevine that kept the rain from our heads was along one of the final stops of a walking wine tasting that began in the marketplatz of the tiny Black Forest town of Gengenbach.

Our guide met us in the impossibly charming town square, pulling a wagon filled with wine bottles and glasses tucked inside fabric pouches for easier carrying.

Remarkable to me because of the vineyard’s proximity to the town center (less than a mile), the stop in Gengenbach was a highlight of a journey along Germany’s Baden Wine Trail. 

Tourists have been visiting the Baden Wine Trail since 1924, when it was first established. The Baden wine-growing region runs north to south for about 250 miles along the eastern bank of the Rhine from around Heidelberg to near the Swiss border. Much of it is in the fabled Black Forest, which means visitors also get to enjoy picturesque rural villages, fine hiking trails, and other outdoor pursuits, as well as outstanding food from local producers.

Obviously, you can select specific segments or try to do the whole route. To get there, and get around, you can rent a car, take a train, ride a bicycle, and, of course, rely on your feet for traversing the vineyards or other Black Forest trails.  

Town and Countryside

We started the Gengenbach wine tasting with a quick look around the medieval town square, dominated by the 18th-century Town Hall. In December, the building is turned into one of the world’s largest advent calendars, each of 24 windows lighting up sequentially on the nights leading to Christmas. The cobbled streets are filled with half-timbered houses, shops, art galleries, and restaurants. Even during a summer excursion, you feel as if you’re walking through a fairy tale.  

Then, it was time to head into the hills … with some wine to lubricate the walk. The river, the views, the vineyards, and church steeples towering over it all make you never want to leave. 

That feeling was a bit of a recurring theme on this wine tour through the Black Forest region. Famous for its fairy tales and cuckoo clocks, the Black Forest is a place name familiar to many Americans. But the number of Americans who visit the Black Forest is small compared with the number of visitors from elsewhere. In 2022, the Black Forest saw just 120,000 visitors from the U.S. compared with 21.5 million visitors overall. Paradoxically, it’s both very well-known and under the radar. 

My trip along the Baden Wine Trail started in another small town in the Black Forest, Oberkirch, easily accessible via train from Frankfurt Airport. A delightful, family-run 52-room hotel was our home base, Hotel-Gasthof Rose. Its restaurant serves an included breakfast each morning as well as.…

By Terri Colby

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