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| Grapevines were introduced to the region by the Romans in the C8th |
A Wine Trail of Different Sort
The Wine Trail wasn’t so much about liquid refreshment as a
self -guided educational experience. Wine has been grown around Stuttgart since
Roman times and you can still see the style of cultivation which they brought
with them. While you can practically walk among grapevines in the city of Stuttgart, those at nearby Esslingen, are some of the oldest in Germany.
The vines are all on stony South – facing slopes to make
maximum use of the available sunshine. Struggling up some of the steep steps, I
hate to think what it must have been like for workers carrying huge baskets of
grapes. At regular intervals there were cute little huts and you could open one of the shutters and look
inside. Round about were little stories and homilies about wine and nature notes about the kinds of
herbs and plants which grow on these hillsides and which add their unique flavours to the wine from this area, but not a drop to drink.
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| One of several cute cottages located at the bottom of the rows of grapevines |
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| It's about providing water and protection from from the
elements for the grapes and workers |
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| What you see when you open the shutter |
If you do want to go wine tasting in the region, spring and autumn are the best times to be there, though Stuttgart has its answer to Oktoberfest with a Wine Festival at the end of Summer. Family -run inns may also be open for wine tastings for around twelve weeks in the season. These “Besen Wirtschaften” (Broom Inns) will have a broom outside their door to let you know they are open for wine tastings and local food. Find out more here.
Other Local Specialties
Speaking of food, I had a pleasant paddock -to -plate dining experience at Sulzburghof, (Not to be confused with similar sounding establishment somewhere north of Ludwigsburg). This one is a family farm near Lenningen which produces its own milk, free range eggs, bread, cakes, vegetables, chocolates and preserves.
After a substantial meal we took a stroll up
the hill to a castle ruin – destroyed in the Peasant Wars, to walk off the enormous
cakes. Having Coffee and Cake is compulsory almost wherever you go in Germany, which rather makes you wonder why Germans aren’t all
enormous. I got a hint of why that wasn't so, when I started using public transport - but more on that later. The other reason is that most places - towns and villages have lots of little walks like this and they are well patronised.
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| Cakes at Sulzburghof - a family run farm near Lenningen. The worst part was choosing which one to have and concluding that it would be a crime against humanity to have more than one |
-Image by Ina Z
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| Delicate cheesecake with a plum topping - two of my favourites in one and yes, I did eat it all |
Other favourite local specialities include homemade Spaetzle – these are made using homemade egg noodle dough and either running it through a special press or sieve into hot water or by
quickly scraping the dough from a board with a knife, though I’m told that takes
considerable skill to get right.
Maultaschen are another one of my favourites. These also require an egg noodle dough but it is turned into delicious pockets - much larger than ravioli or Asian Dumplings, which are filled with mince, onions and herbs or other fillings such as brown rice and spinach or mushrooms, and then simmered gently in hot stock until they come to the surface. Apparently they were especially popular during Lent when Catholics are supposed to refrain from meat, because you can hide meat inside them. Get the original recipe here.
Apart from the sumptious cakes, Swabian cooking may not look pretty or
glamorous, but it is tasty, hearty and used to be cheap -like turnips
and parsnips before the gourmet chefs got hold of them. Nouvelle Cuisine never had a chance here.
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| It's said that the The Sulzburg Castle was destroyed by angry peasants during the Peasant's War because it's occupant was profligate and tried to extract more taxes while the people were starving. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere |
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| View of the Lenningen from the Sulzburg Castle ruins with the Swabian Alps in the background |
Another thing which I enjoyed both at ‘home’ and at the reunion were Alpine Lentils (Alba Leisa). Smaller and nuttier than conventional brown lentils, these used to be grown on the Swabian Plateau until that became uneconomic. They were only recently rediscovered in the Vavilov Institute’s gene bank in St. Petersburg and are now being enthusiastically cultivated again.
Arts and Crafts
They are also recognised by the Slow Food Movement as part
of its appreciation of unique regional foods and sustainable farming methods. The Slow Food Movement was
out in force at the upland Country Show we attended in the Biosphere Reserve in Münsingen, close to where my Dad used to live.
This also used to be an Army Training Reserve, but the former barracks were now filled with all kinds of
country produce such as fine woollens and knitwear for which the region is famous, woodwork, art metalwork, wines, spirits, cheeses
and oils.
Definitely a better use for them in my opinion, given that our common enemies are species extinction and climate change. After all, Queen Victoria demonstrated that peace brought prosperity to all, unlike the endless cycles of destruction and conquest.
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| There were lots of handcrafted Christmas decorations on display. I had planned to take a quick look around the entire exhibition and then take some pictures, but never managed to do either |
The people here remind me of the Scots. They are frugal and hardworking, don't talk much and don't give much away. Both are the product of an often harsh and unforgiving environment and with infinite patience and care, produce exquisite crafts and engineered goods such as small hand tools.
I saw the same traits in my father - especially the perfectionism. His father was a locksmith. Dad trained as a watchmaker before doing a second apprenticeship as a commercial artist after being unable able to find work during the depression. My cousin told me that the production of small hand tools such as pliers and scissors " die Zangenmacher" began here, as an offset against poor harvests. This is also the home of Cuckoo Clocks and where the first Alpenstocks and ice axes evolved. Dad ended up working in a Cuckoo Clock factory in Schwenningen while we were still living in the forest.
There is a tree in this Alpine region - the Swiss Stone Pine (Pinus cembra), "Der Zirbelkiefer" or locally just die Zirpe for short, which embodies the people here. Related to the Sequoia, it only grows above 1200m where the soils are poor and thin and the climate is harsh. It can live for up to 500 years.
Its wood is tough and dense and is mostly used for beautiful, strong and durable furniture. Beds made of Zirpenwood were on sale at this exhibition. Their fragrant pine scent filled the pavillion in which they were displayed. This scent is said to promote restful sleep and the tree oil - also on sale, is reputed to be especially calming. Who wouldn't like a forest bed that makes you dream of alpine meadows? There's no price on them. I didn't dare ask. I couldn't even afford the beautifully turned nutmeg grinder made of pear wood at 58 € ($AUD 98.07) or was that 85€?
[PS. Tasmanians looking at pictures of the Zirpe could be forgiven for thinking it is like of our endemic Pencil Pine (Arthrotaxis cupressiodes) which looks vaguely similar, is similarly tough and is also only found at higher elevations in our highlands. While both emerged during the Mezozoic era around 150 million years ago, the two species are unrelated and Pencil Pines can live for up to 1200 years, provided there's no fire].
The tough Alpine climate also produces the finest wools, even in Tasmania, and this combined with the mechanical skills, has given rise to a number of small knitting mills in the region which also exhibit here. As I was looking around I wondered why this region had not become an industrial powerhouse the way say, Solingen did, which also started out producing things like scissors, cutlery and knives. Why has the world heard of Solingen and not Münsingen? I concluded that one would have to have been isolation and the second would have been lack of resources, including capital. Based on the stories I've heard from my Dad, grinding poverty and the natural tendency of hill folk to avoid risk, would have precluded moving into mass production. Instead, they used the long cold winters to produce individual, high quality artisanal items to supplement a meagre income from the land.
The Museum for Small Tools in Remscheid, shows the region around Stuttgart to have been a large centre of production. Did the Celts who lived here have a hand in this? The Romans certainly did and this type of small scale craft production was widely shared among other countries bordering the Alps.
Black -faced sheep resting between displays of alpine - sheep herding methods, periodically poked their faces around the door as we wandered around. In the courtyard, traditional carpenters demonstrated how to split sawlogs and turn them into planks without modern equipment. There was also
chocolate. I could go on a lot about chocolate. It’s nearly as ubiquitous as
cake, but I’ll leave that for another post, to stop this one getting much too
long.
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