mrspjuth

Jacky and Marie-Thérèse Berthelmé, owners of Domaine Albert Mann in Wettolsheim, picked me up at Basel Airport. It was nice to see them again. Last time was when they visit Sweden in december last year. They had invited me to come and visit and to work in the vineyard and winery, a dream I have had for some time.

As I arrived late in the evening, and the food on the Lufthansa plan was not that good so I was hungry, we went for dinner somewhere between Basel and Wettolsheim. They choose Restaurant de la Gare in Guewenheim. I am always impressed that in every small village in France there is at least one, or more, really good restaurant. (Try to find that in small villages in Sweden) Gare is really a good one. Friendly owners, Michel & Annick Seidel, and crew and good Alsacian food. And a enormous and crazy winelist – 1400 different wines and a total of 50.000 bottles in the cellar.

I started with Léscargot, can be wrong, and after we had Carpe frite, local dish. Tasty deep fried peaces of carpe. Here we talkt about fresh carpe. They have a fish pool with carpe and take one out when the order reach the kitchen. To the starters we had a fantastic Riesling Grand Cru Schlossberg 2004 from Albert Mann. The dinner continued with boef with mushrooms and ended with lemon tarte. A 2006 Côte-Rotie Cote-Brune from Domaine Jamet was perfect to my boef. I really like the wines fron Côte-Rotie and specially this.

A good start on my week in Alsace!

Day 2, saturday, would turn out to be a great day – why not?!

Sleept good and woke quite late. After a quick visit to the village baker for bread and back home for breakfast we took a ride to a couple of the vineyards of Albert Mann. Beautiful weather, sunny and warm like a Swedish summer, was all I needed. The area is soo nice! We walked around in the vineyards, visited a new lot with a great view of the village Kaysersberg (not yet planted) and stoped by friend of Jacky. I got to meet the famous lady Christine Ferber, makes marvelous confitures, who have journalists visiting every week to write about her and her recepies for confiture and cakes. (She told me that she is invited to come to Sweden to talk about her business).

We had lunch in Jackys garden. Foie gras and bread and steak minute with salad and after that rubarb cake. Jacky opened a marvelous Muscat 1997 Le Tri for the dessert. Golden yellow with honey and flowers…can it be better?

Time for siesta and after that I needed to move my body and went for a long walk among the vines.

We spent the evening in Kaysersberg watching their basketball team lose. I have not been to a game since Jamtland Ambassadeurs was a top team in Sweden, must be 2002 or something like that, and it is a lot of fun. Basketball is a fast and tough game.

Dinner at a really trendy restaurant, Flamme & co. Tarte Flammé concept that I really liked. New, inovative dishes of the local tarte flammé. I had one with salmon and it was really tasty. The restaurant is owned by the two Nasti brothers that also own 1 star restaurant Chambard. I had the pleasure to get to meet them both. We walked over to Chambard after our fammé dinner and got invited for a glas of champagne, Egly-Ouriet Grand Cru, in their kitchen. The chef Olivier Nasti was running the show and all the plates that the kitchen sent out looked really good. (We might eat there this week). Olivier told me that he had visit Stockholm about two years ago and cooked at Sturehof and that he fished in the middle of Stockholm. Very friendly brothers, like all the people I meet in Alsace.

Back home really late for a good night sleep and new adventures