Celebrating the holiday season in luxurious style often involves a bit of sparkling wine, and Luxembourg sparkles in that regard. Spending Christmas in Luxembourg gave me the opportunity to sample Luxembourg’s sparkling wines, visit some caves, and hike two overlapping trails through vineyards stretching along the slopes of the Moselle Luxembourgeoise wine region.

A  snowy Christmas Eve and the smell of wood fires didn’t happen here, but the relatively mild December temperatures left the surroundings green: green moss, green grass still growing, and green fir tops. The greens, set against the grey, bare, twisted grape vines, grey tree trunks, and grey patches of fog, gave the hike a still, meditative and surreal atmosphere.

 

Starting at the village of Wellenstein’s church, the Auto-Pedestre 1 Trail climbs into the vineyards facing the Moselle, and fairly quickly reaches the edge of woodland. In contrast to the Moselle further north in Germany, the slopes are not spectacularly steep, nor so high along this section of the famous river.

Crossing the ridge, you face the hinterland of the Moselle Luxembourgeoise wine region, and drop into a valley. Here, the surreal atmosphere intensified, as the quiet sounds of nature seeped into my consciousness: the occasional, solitary chirp of a bird, the drip of raindrops, and the burbling of countless rivulets feeding into a small stream.

The trail entered the small Kuebendaellchen Nature Preserve, a real jewel: Solitary, and left to develop on its own. The terrain drops off amazingly on one side, and the densest copses of fir trees were almost pitch black in their interiors. Water oozes from the soil, which is very clayey in places. Moss grew undisturbed in luxurious carpets of green over rocks, tree trunks and old logs.

 

A patch filled with old vines spouting long yellow branches was left to show that even in old age, the vines serve to provide lengths of supple vine which can be used to tie back productive vines.

 

Back into an isolated vineyard, forlorn and waterlogged this time of year, and then onto a trail used by agricultural machinery to reach CR 151, near a vintner stairway on the other side of it. This is where both trails overlap for a short stretch.

 

This is also where I began following the Circuit Cremant, a trail named in honor of the sparkling wines the grapes from these vineyards produce. The trail surface becomes mostly paved, and it leads to one of the most interesting man-made features on the trail: the reconstructed Roman temple. The explanation boards in the temple detail the history of wine and the Romans in the area. Archeologists who excavated the funerary monument here discovered that wine has been produced in this area since at least Roman times. As I sat on the swing under the portico, I looked across the Moselle to Nennig, Germany, about a mile away, where a Roman mosaic of spectacular craftsmanship was also discovered.

 

Leaving this rain-free idyll, a short walk through lower vineyards led to the Caves des Vignerons Wellenstein, and the adjacent Poll Fabaire tasting and sales rooms. Tasting three still white wines and two sparkling wines (known as cremant) at a very modest cost, inspired me to finish the rest of the Circuit Cremant in spite of the rain. The village center, a tiny place made smaller by an absolute stillness, nonetheless possessed a couple of picturesque narrow alleyways and a square, filled with shuttered Christmas Market huts, huddled near the church. With everything now closed, I left, but promised myself to return next year for yet another hike.