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Immediately, I’m going to be telling you all about our go to to the wine area of Saale-Unstrut within the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which simply so occurs to be the northernmost of Germany‘s 13 wine-growing areas.
Saale-Unstrut is thought for its high quality wines and its wine historical past dates again over a thousand years, with the primary vines being cultivated by monks within the 12 months 998 AD!
This can be a place the place terraced vineyards come spilling down the hills, the place medieval castles sit atop clifftops, and the place church buildings stand guard within the coronary heart of the outdated city. We’ve stated it earlier than, and we’ll say it once more – Germany has some fairly magical locations to find.
We did the whole lot you would possibly anticipate from a wine area – we toured vineyards, sampled wines, and even spent the night time in a wine resort. Nevertheless, we additionally realized that Saale-Unstrut has lots to supply past its wine. We additionally visited castles, climbed as much as the attic of a cathedral, and took half in a forging workshop all in someday.
We had a extremely enjoyable day experiencing Germany’s northernmost wine-growing area and under are some concepts to your personal go to:
Discover Freyburg on foot
We began the morning with a guided stroll via the city of Freyburg, which is taken into account the wine capital of the area.
We discovered it to be a German city filled with appeal and very nice to stroll round. Houses and companies had been painted in cheerful pastel shades, there have been vines crawling up the facet of buildings, and we additionally observed rooftops with eye-shaped home windows that type of made it really feel like we had been being watched from above.
Throughout our stroll via Freyburg, we visited St. Marien, a Lutheran church within the centre of city. It’s thought of the little sister of Naumburg Cathedral, which we might go to afterward within the day.
In fact, the principle factor that caught our consideration strolling via Freyburg is that we had been surrounded by vineyards, vineyards and extra vineyards! Sure, we knew we had been visiting a wine city, however I don’t assume we had been anticipating the vines to be proper within the city and so accessible!
Store for glowing wines at Rotkäppchen
Talking of wine, probably the most widespread stops in Freyburg is Rotkäppchen-Mumm, a vineyard that dates again to 1856 and makes a speciality of glowing wines.
They make up practically half the marketplace for glowing wine in Germany, they usually’re additionally one of many 5 largest producers of glowing wine on this planet. So if you wish to purchase some Saale-Unstrut wines, that is the place to take action!
They provide excursions in German, however another choice, for those who don’t converse the language, is to simply go to the store and peruse their numerous glowing wine choices. Sure bottles can solely be obtained at this explicit location, in order that alone makes it price a go to.
Take within the views from Klosterkirche Zscheiplitz
There are many unimaginable lookout factors in Freyburg and the primary one we visited was Klosterkirche Zscheiplitz, often known as St. Bonifatius.
From this level, you may get pleasure from views of the Unstrut River in addition to small villages sprinkled throughout the valley under surrounded by nature.
That is most likely time to inform you that biking journeys are actually widespread on this space and there’s a wine path to comply with. So in case your thought of vacation is biking via scenic countryside, hopping from one vineyard to the following, and stumbling upon a number of castles alongside the way in which, nicely, that is the place with a whole bunch of kilometres of motorcycle paths alongside the Saale and Unstrut rivers.
Get pleasure from a winery picnic
It wouldn’t have been a correct go to to a wine city with out additionally having lunch at a winery!
We visited Herzoglicher Weinberg, which is a terraced winery that has been preserved within the type of a baroque winery from the late 18th century. It sits on the foot of the Unstrut River and it has Neuenburg Fortress watching over it from above. This will very nicely be one of many most scenic vineyards we have now ever visited!
A number of the grapes yow will discover on this winery embody Pinot Blanc, Silvaner, and Pinot Noir. We tried a glass of their Pinot Blanc and Sam was exceedingly happy by the truth that the wine glass was crammed proper to the very high! We accompanied our wines with a picnic-style lunch that includes cheese, salami, olives, stuffed peppers and darkish bread.
It was simply what we wanted to maintain us going and the setting was good!
Go to Schloss Neuenburg
After noticing Neuenburg Fortress from the winery we simply talked about, we couldn’t resist driving up for a better look.
This fortress was constructed across the 12 months 1090 by the Thuringian rely Ludwig the Leaper, and sure, there’s a story behind his identify.
In response to native legend (which can have been fairly embellished over time), after stabbing a ruling Rely after which being incarcerated, Ludwig the Leaper leapt from a fortress tower into the river. That’s the place his servant was ready for him with a ship and his favorite white horse named Swan, and so Ludwig the Leaper was in a position to make his good escape. That’s the man who constructed this fortress.
Sounds just like the stuff of German fairy tales, however both method, it was a really cool place to go to and the views had been as spectacular as you’d think about.
Tour Naumburg Cathedral
Subsequent up, we continued to the close by city of Naumburg to go to Naumburg Cathedral, which just lately was acknowledged as a UNESCO World Heritage Web site.
Often known as the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, that is thought of certainly one of Europe’s most necessary cultural monuments from the excessive Center Ages. What makes it distinctive is that it’s the one church on this planet to comprise two choir screens from the excessive medieval interval.
The primary attraction is unquestionably the West Choir, which options 12 statues depicting the church’s high donors courting again to the mid-thirteenth century. Sure, for those who gave sufficient cash, you bought a sculpture in your likeness positioned proper within the church for all to see!
These statues had been crafted by a medieval stone sculptor now solely often called the Naumburg Grasp. Essentially the most well-known statue of all is Uta, who is claimed to depict the “most stunning girl of the Center Ages”. Hearsay has it she could have additionally been the inspiration for the Evil Queen in Disney’s Snow White.
Throughout our guided go to of Naumburg Cathedral, we bought to climb up a spiralling staircase that led to the attic, which then led to one of many towers, the place you may get pleasure from views of the city under. We additionally toured the Cathedral Treasury Vault, which is likely one of the largest Romanesque vaults in central Germany and homes sacral artworks.
The one technique to entry the attic and the treasury is as a part of a public guided tour, however do take into account that the tour will probably be in German.
Forge a novel memento
Then, for our afternoon exercise, we drove to Burgenlandschmiede for a forging workshop.
Sam has been tremendous on this ever since he found the present Solid in Hearth, so he jumped on the alternative to spend a day studying from a forge grasp.
We met Lukas who’s a part of the Handgemacht Program in Saale-Unstrut, the place guests can meet up with native craftsmen to participate in all kinds of workshops and experiences. You possibly can meet with sweet makers, beekeepers, woodworkers, and whiskey producers, so there are all kinds of experiences available based mostly in your pursuits.
Over the course of some hours, Sam realized how one can make a log poker for the fireside. The tip consequence was a extremely cool memento with a novel journey story behind it.
Keep in a wine resort
It wouldn’t have been a correct go to to the wine area of Saale-Untrut with out spending the night time in a wine resort. Residence for the night time was the Freylich Zahn Weinhotel in Freyburg.
The cool factor about this wine resort is that they’ve their very personal on-site wine bar, which is out there 24 hours. The best way it really works is you could load cash on to a card, which you then scan on the wine bar with a view to pour whichever wine you’re feeling like sampling. They’d the whole lot from whites to rosés to reds, so it was loads of enjoyable gaining access to it.
The resort additionally has its personal on-site restaurant referred to as 51° Restaurant & Weinbar since this wine area sits alongside the 51° parallel. It’s a extremely cool restaurant in a comfy cavernous setting with dim lighting.
I had a scrumptious gnocchi with pumpkin, rucola and parmesan that was paired with a white wine. In the meantime, Sam had the steak with roasted potatoes paired with a pink wine, which I can affirm was beautiful.
And that was our go to to the wine area of Saale-Unstrut. We hope you loved following alongside!
This journey was made attainable in partnership with the German Nationwide Vacationer Workplace and Saale-Unstrut Tourismus.
