Trail Name: Saxon Wine Trail (Saechsische Weinwanderweg)
Trail Type: Long distance trail; varied surfaces, but mostly paved or hard parked earth, well maintained, and well-marked.
Length:
Total: 88.5 kilometers/55 miles
Last (my) stage: Meissen to Diesbar-Seusslitz: @18 kilometers
Convenient to: Meissen, or Dresden, Sachsen (Saxony), Germany
Marking: Red grapes within a red-lined circle on a white background
When I began this hike, I had little idea how delicious the Appellation Cote Rotie wines could be! I had not really considered the potential for difference between a Cote Blonde or Cote Brune wine, especially given the varietals allowed. Once again, I found that hiking this terrain, this “terroir,” opened my horizons in more ways than one.
What I Learned
France’s great Northern Rhone River Valley appellations begin about 20 miles downriver from Lyon by Ampuis. Eight appellations in total from north to south, the famous Cote Rotie appellation, on the river’s right bank, is where some of the worlds famous vineyards and wines begin.
The appellation begins in Saint Cyr-sur-le Rhone, and ends in Tupin-et-Semons. Ampuis, in the middle, is particularly well situated as its slopes face in a more southerly direction. Vines have been planted on the slopes overlooking Ampuis for over 2500 years. The town has two famous slopes: Cote Brune and Cote Blonde. Legend says that these names arose when the local count provided the slope now known as Cote Blonde as a dowry for his fair-haired daughter, and the slope now called Cote Brune for his brunette daughter. The soil in this appellation is an iron-rich schist soil, overlaid by limestone and granitic components. Some wine enthusiasts find in general that, due to slight soil differences, Cote Blonde produces a softer style of wine, and Cote Brune, with more clay in the soil mix, tends to result in bigger and more powerful wines.
Trail Name: Sentier des Vignes (a Ampuis)
Trail Type: Short distance circuit; varying surfaces, from tarmac/concrete (about half) to earthen, to loose gravel, fairly well maintained, and fairly well marked.
Length: 7.1 kilometers/4.4 miles
Convenient to: Lyon or Vienne, France
Marking: Black lettering “Ampuis 1” on yellow and white (beginning at Route de la Brocarde)
Bardolino, a town with a wine named after it, is a pretty and popular town on the shores of Lake Garda, in northern Italy. One of the southern Alpine lakes, Lake Garda and Bardolino are especially crowded in the summer. But in October, it is much quieter, and the weather is cooler, yet still sunny. In other words, ideal for hiking.
East of the built up stretch along the waterfront, the land rises, and grape vines begin. The town of Costermano, set in an area of rolling ridges, was previously drive by territory for me, as I headed to the lakeside towns. Big mistake! Costermano, beyond its main street, has timeless farm villas set in quiet scenery, nice restaurants, and beautiful vistas of Alps and lake, if you know where to go. Costermano also has a trail for wine enthusiasts that provides the perfect opportunity to explore this area beyond the waterfront, where the landscape retains its bucolic setting, and grapes for Bardolino wine grow as they have here for centuries, if not millennia.
What I Learned
The DOC Bardolino zone centers around the small town of Bardolino, east of the shores of Lake Garda, in northern Italy.
This zone produces both DOC Bardolino, and Doc Chiaretto wines. These wines come from the Corvina Veronese grape, also known simply as Corvina. Some Rondinella, and sometimes Molinara, also the main grapes of the adjoining Valpolicella region may be found in blends of Bardolino or Chiaretto wines.
Trail Name: Giro dei Vigneti
Trail Type: Medium distance circuit; well-maintained and almost all hard surface (either paved or hard packed earth); Marking on the trail is rather good.
Length:
Total – 10 kilometers/ 6 miles
Convenient to: Bardolino, Italy
Marking: Stylized black hiker on white background, on brown signs with trail name in white letters
Following hard on the heels of the longest circuit hike I have done to date, comes the shortest one. Both were in the German wine region of Baden, albeit one in the most southern district of the region, and the other in one of the northern-most districts. Both were fun to hike, although I must confess I found this trail more to my taste aesthetically.
What I Learned:
Hohentengen am Hochrhein, is in an area south of the Swiss Canton of Schaffhausen, and the Klettgau wine district, west of the Swiss town of Eglisau in the Canton of Zurich, and to its south is the Swiss town of Kaiserstuhl. But this wine-producing area is part of Germany’s Baden wine region, Bodensee district. Its micro-climate is similar: cool, but not frigid in winter, elevated, but not mountainous, and warm, even occasionally hot, in the summer. In short, it is good for vines. Like the area of Lake Constance in general, this area gets a fair amount of sun, considering its German/Swiss location. Vines have been here, off and on, for over a millennium. Currently, the Engelhof Winery has planted about 25 hectares to the west of Hohentengen, on the Oelberg slope, which has an excellent southern exposure.
