We came to Vins d'Alsace Robert Blanck as part of a Viking Rhein River Cruise excursion…read more Our bus trip from the boat took about 25 mins and our coach was upscale and very modern. We found it be a nice opportunity to see the countryside. The tour was given by the adult daughter of the winery's owner. She was very knowledgeable and warm, while taking time to answering all of our questions. We started off in the wine cellar and ended upstairs tasting several of their wines. Unlike American tours, we sat in small comfortable tables, with both water and pretzels to cleanse our palates. Very cliché and relaxing We came away very impressed, along with a few bottles and some pâté for our trip.

Lovely 16th generation family owned vineyard. This estate makes only white wine and brut blanc…read more (you can't call it "champagne " unless it's from that region of France). We were given a tour of the cellar where we got to see all the old wine barrels and learned about how long the wine takes to make, how the barrels are cleaned and how the vines grew. Also learned how the bubbles are added to make the brut blanc (they use the champagne process) and how the yeast is removed. Very nice tour. The host who gave us the presentation was one of the daughters of the family estate.

This is a lovely little shop with local wine, eaux-de-vie, liqueurs, and Alsatian gourmet items…read more The even have souvenir knickknacks. You can taste the local wines and distilled spirits. The service is friendly. We were welcomed in, toured around the store, and then did tasting. The proprietor even offered to keep our purchases until the next day so we would not have to leave them in the car overnight or lug them up to the hotel room. He came home with wonderful jams, wines, and even a handcrafted wood and metal birdhouse.

Nothing like a good wine buzz at 11:00am! This tasting room is along a road - in a very beautiful…read morevillage near Freiburg - that hosts several tasting rooms and wineries. On Saturdays, it's only open from 10am-12pm, which seems to be the norm in the area. You'll need to ring the doorbell on the side to gain entry. The tasting room is small, but very nice and I figured we'd taste a few bottles, then be out the door pretty quickly. As it turns out, we spent so much time here that we did not make it to our next tasting place (open from 10am-12pm as well...) The host was friendly and what started out as a tasting of 2 wines ended with 7 or 8 tastes (very generous pours as well!) with our host hiding the labels and asking us to guess. We were pretty good at doing so and being the only tasters, we had an opportunity to ask her a lot of questions. Everything we tasted are quite good (not one bad pour) and well-priced. The pinot noirs (called "spaetburgunder" in this region) are shockingly light in color, but have a stronger, fuller taste than the pinots I'm familiar with in California. We walked out with 3 bottles of the 2009 Vitus (our favorite) and 1 bottle of the 2008 Novis (cabernet/merlot blend). Fun place and well worth a visit.