Alsace France and the Wine Tasting Dinner

We love the Alsace region in France. It is only a 4 hour drive and we have a charming B&B where we love to stay, Ambiance Jardin, owned by Pierrette and Jean Luc. Check out their web-page, the photography and the layout are both stunning. After staying three times, we feel like we are staying with friends instead of at a B&B.

a few photos around the B&B…

Pierrette collects antique watering cans. She has hundreds of them.

Every corner has a sweet vignette……a photo waiting to be snapped.

For more photos from the B&B, see the album titled Ambiance Jardin, on the right hand side of the first page of the Blog.

We picked this weekend to go as they were having a wine tasting and dinner. It was going to be in french – but who cares as long as you are drinking wine!

This is Pierrette and her friend who is the wine expert. He only spoke French. It was a diverse table, there were three from Germany (only one spoke English), me and D (D doing well with his French), Pierrette's son and his wife (both spoke a little English) and three friends (all French but did speak some English).

We started the dinner with sparkling wine. An interesting tidbit, what we call Champagne in the US, is called sparkling wine in Europe. Real Champagne only comes from the town of Champagne. The U.S. doesn't follow this rule, but it is strictly enforced in Europe.

D listening intently to the descriptions of the wines. It was a unique tasting as we sampled three wines without food, we were served a course, and tasted them again with the food. We did this for each course.

After sampling 15 different glasses of wine, I am pretty sure we were both speaking French and German!!

Jean-Jon was our translator. After he had several glasses of wine, we think he forgot how to speak English! No, he did a very good job. It was also great practice for D to use his french in a real setting (vs class).

A very enjoyable dinner with lots of laughter!

We spent the next day in Colmar, founded in the 9th century. It has many half-timbered houses. It is on the French/German border, but I think the houses look more German than French.