Wine Regions

Alsace is one of our personal favorite wine regions in France and has a history as unique as its grapes are flavorful.

It may not be the first choice for visitors exploring French wine regions, I will admit (as it often feels secondary to nearby Champagne and Burgundy), but for those who like fine Riesling, Pinot Gris, Gewurztraminer, quaint towns, and world-class Christmas Markets in the holiday season, it is really hard to skip over a trip to Alsace.

But, as with planning trips to any wine region, figuring out the finer details of an Alsace wine trip has many things to keep in mind. So we have you covered here with key details to know when visiting Alsace for wine tasting!

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When we booked a wine trip to France, we decided to head east out of Paris and visit Champagne and Alsace on the same itinerary.

Part of this was purely out of necessity, as we were traveling onward to Germany and had to end in Munich, so heading east made sense to easily connect to onward trains. Another part was that it was Christmas time, and we wanted to check out the iconic Christmas markets in Alsace and nearby.

But, in reality, we booked both on the same itinerary because we could- the two regions aren't that far apart (about 2-3 hours by train/car) and starting in Champagne was an easy ~50 minute train ride from Paris.

In retrospect, however, hitting two major French wine regions in one itinerary was a lot to say the least. So much so that we had to make sacrifices in both, particularly when it came to buying wine to bring home.

So in this one, we thought we'd share some pros and cons of combining Champagne and Alsace into a single trip, including what we liked and what we would've perhaps done differently.

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Is there any wine region more famous than Champagne? This is debatable, of course, as there are several regions that could fit that bill. But at the end of the day, Champagne is one of the most popular regions for wine in the world, and it is easy to see why- producers here make the world's best sparkling wine!

If you are planning a trip to Champagne, there are many things you may want to consider before you go. We've got you covered in this guide with tips from our visit!

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When planning our trip to Champagne, we have to admit we didn't kow where exactly we wanted to make our base. This famous region has wineries all over that we would've happily booked a tasting, so planning where to stay in Champagne required some extra thought.

Although we settled on Epernay primarily for a small town feel and easier access to some of the Champagne houses we actually booked, we could've just as easily booked a stay in Reims or any number of other small towns nearby.

So in this one, we wanted to talk about planning logistics for Champagne and how that impacts where you may ultimately want to stay!

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If you are planning a trip to go wine tasting in Alsace, you will likely be thinking about where to make your base, as the region itself is quite large.

We went back and forth on whether we wanted to stay in Strasbourg, in the north, the smaller city of Colmar, to the south, or find an even smaller town somewhere in between. We were visiting both in tandem with Christmas markets during the holidays (which have special considerations we'll get into later), and really struggled with the best choice of where to stay.

Ultimately, we settled on Colmar, and we were quite glad that we did- it was the perfect location for wine tasting and Christmas markets!

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