Trail Name: Fraenkischer Rotwein Wanderweg I (Franconian Red Wine Hiking Trail) (FRW)
Trail Type: Long-distance trail; well-maintained, with mixed surfaces and stairs, good marking on most of the trail, although missing in a few places.
Length:
Total – 79 kilometers/49 miles
Segment (first three stages): 48.3 kilometers/30 miles
Convenient to:
Aschaffenburg, Germany
Marking:
A Franconian wine glass (fat-stemmed), mostly red in color, often with the words Fraenkischer Rotwein Wanderweg, set on a green and white background on a square.
This is a post about a long-distance cycling itinerary. But I was not cycling it. The most famous cycle route in France, the Tour de France, has an itinerary that changes every year. Fortuitously, in a perfect storm of time and place, I was able to watch it as it passed.
Fortunately too, there was a short vineyard hike I could do in the area that day. It began in the center of Rosheim, an Alsatian town in the department of Bas Rhin, and a town where the Tour was scheduled to pass through in July 2019. Rosheim is a delightful small town, with a lot of town spirit as I would find out. The trail leading out of town passed several well-maintained buildings of great historic value. In fact, the trail through town followed along the car route Route Romane d’Alsace, or Romanesque Alsace Route, demonstrating that this town has had a long and illustrious past, worth a detour in any visit to lower Alsace.
Northern Alsace has a great viticultural and vinicultural tradition. Six main white varietals grow throughout Alsace: Riesling, Silvaner, Gewuerztraminer, Muscat, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, and the only red varietal: Pinot Noir.
While the reds might be less common, and lighter-bodied than Pinot Noir wines from other French appellations, the whites are often full-bodied expressions of the grape and terroir. Alsatian wine is quite good, and demand for it is rising.
Another cycling route, and another chance to sample the wines along the Main River. The Main River valley is famous for its wines and its long-distance bike trail, the Main Radweg. It is one of Germany’s most popular cycling itineraries, justifiably beloved for its combination of pretty scenery, easy riding, welcoming towns and villages, and its wine culture. Many cyclists complete the entire Main Radweg. It is almost 400 kilometers long, and is not a circuit. This endeavor calls for time as well as careful advanced planning, which are usually in short supply for most of us. The Geniesser Tour cycling itinerary however is a wonderful alternative. Depending on stops, it is a half-day to a day-long circuit through one of the quietest sections of the Main Radweg in the Franconian wine region’s eastern Maindreieck district.
Beginning in Dettelbach, a well-known wine village, the trail followed along the river on the Main Radweg for about three kilometers. At Mainstockheim, the Geniesser Tour route peeled off into the hills above the river. The GWF, or the Winzergemeinschaft Franken, to give it its full name, came into view after passing through Buchbronn. GWF wines can come from grapes from various wine districts of Franconia. But the closest were found along the trail in the vineyards outside little Repperndorf. The trail entered Kitzingen shortly thereafter. It is undoubtedly the largest town in the area, with an historic center that is well worth the 500-meter detour. But if you push on, not to worry: the route does circle back to Kitzingen, albeit on the other side of the river.
The Franconia wine region (Franken, in German) has several wine districts, and the Maindreieck district is perhaps the best known. Set along the Main river, it has some of the region’s most famous vineyard sites, dramatic scenery, and a thriving wine trade since the early Middle Ages.
Dreieck in German means triangle. The Maindreieck is a triangle of land surrounded on three sides by the Main River, a major tributary to the Rhine River. The river makes three dramatic curves close to the heart of Franconia, forming this triangular “peninsula”, hence the name of this viticultural area in south central Germany. The most important and undoubtedly best-known town for wine culture in this area is Wuerzburg, which in addition to some of the most well-known vineyards in Franconia, has the extremely popular wine bar on the old bridge.
Trail Type: Long distance cycling circuit; well-maintained and almost exclusively paved, mostly good marking throughout the circuit
Length:
Total – 49 kilometers/ 30.5 miles
Convenient to: Kitzingen, and Wuerzburg, Germany
Marking:
An official Kitzinger Land tour, the signage for this tour numbered two includes outlines of a wine glass, wine bottle and plate of asparagus spears in burgundy on a white background.
There are discrete places that our memory captures in perpetuity for reasons unknown to us. Saarburg was one such place. A combination of road closures, road work detours and searching for a shortcut, took me there one afternoon. One glance at the compact historic center, rising dramatically above the serpentine Saar River, impressed itself so firmly in my mind that when I found a wine-themed hiking trail there, I knew that I would have to return to hike the trail.
