What’s it like to cycle for six days through French wine country in Alsace? I took a week long Beercycling tour on the Route des Vins from Strasbourg to Colmar over the summer. The day to day was long, sometimes grueling, and very often rainy. In between we drank amazing sparkling wine, local brews, and ate Alsatian specialities like sauerkraut and tarte flambee.
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I’ve already covered the tour at a high level, but knew that folks would want to read more about the day to day of a 163 mile cycling trip through Alsace. You might have questions about the trip, so I’ll cover those as well.
Itinerary for Beer and Wine Cycling Tour in Alsace, France
Our tour covered 263 km (163 miles) in 6 days on the bike with one rest day in Alsace. We began in Strasbourg, and ended in Colmar. Along the way we rode to
Day 1: Strasbourg out and back, 30 miles
Day 2: Strasbourg to Obernai, 28 miles
Day 3: Obernai to Ribeauvillé, 32 miles, hilly
Day 4: Rest day in Ribeauvillé
Day 5: Ribeauvillé to Lapoutrie, 20 miles
Day 6: Lapoutrie to Gueberschwihr, 37 miles, hilly
Day 7: Gueberschwihr to Colmar, 21 miles, optional add on to Three Castles of Eguisheim
Day by Day of my French Cycling Tour
Day 0: Paris to Strasbourg, the start of the trip
My Sparkling Summer trip began with a six-hour layover in Iceland, and then two days in Paris on the Left Bank. I was staying with my friend Tiffany at a sweet hotel exploring for a few days before we took the fast train from Paris Est to Strasbourg Sunday afternoon (84€ each). The train itself was very uneventful, and it’s amazing how quickly you can get from Paris to the edge of the country. We arrived to a very rainy evening in Strasbourg. Luckily our hotel was across the square from the train station. By the time we checked in, met the group, drank a bunch of Aperol Spritzes (Spritz Index: 6€), it was time to hit the town for some dinner.
We did not have a reservation (note: make a reservation next time), so we ended up at Alsace à Boire, a tasting room and bottle shop that had some food. The ladies did a wine tasting, while the guys picked out some local beers for dinner. They were almost out of food, but we were able to eat…something. I think I had a pretzel? I don’t remember. There was a lot of wine.
Our server was a darling woman named Charlène, who was also a Swiftie! We compared Swiftie tattoos, and concert experiences. She shared her photos from Paris N1, the start of the European Eras Tour, with me.
After dinner, we stumbled around the Old Town in Strasbourg to see the famous cathedral. At noon, there is a spectacular astronomical clock display at the cathedral. We were there at 9:30pm, however, so we mostly walked around and took photos. It’s amazing how light it stays in France midyear!
🚲Miles cycled: 0
🥨Meals:Alsace à Boire
🏨Hotel: Hotel Tandem. A bicycle themed hotel across the street from the main train station in a great location in Strasbourg. This very charming hotel had an absolutely unreal breakfast each morning. Plus it had a full bar, so we drank to our heart’s content in Aperol Spritzes each night. Rooms from $146.
Day 1: Strasbourg Out and Back, 20 easy miles
We woke up to an amazing breakfast at Hotel Tandem. Truly, this was a buffet of handmade pastries, eggs, cakes, fruits, and more. I would recommend this hotel for the breakfast alone!
Today our bike ride was an easy out and back to get used to the bikes and see if any changes needed to be made. Most of our ride today was on a canal towpath along the river. The rain picked up by the time we made it to our first brewery, La Houblonnière Pfister (houblonniere means hops), a small locally owned hop-grower and beermaker in Wingersheim. The owner is a fourth-generation hop grower, and his son has begun using some of those hops to make beer. The beer was great, and the family kindly let us eat lunch out of the rain in one of their barns. Also they had a dog!! She got lots of pets.
After lunch, we cycled through the rain to one of my favorite breweries of the trip, Mogwaĩ in Mundolsheim, France. This small brewery sits in an industrial park but makes terrific one-batch beers. They are famous for their pizza beers. The three-person brewery led us through a very small tour, and then let us taste a number of their beers. My absolute favorite was a tzatziki beer, flavored with cucumber, lime and salt. I loved it so much I bought a 4-pack for the trip back to the US.
That night we went to a popular local restaurant/bar for a pre-planned dinner. It was also the night the French National team was playing in the semi-finals of the Euro Cup, so the place was packed and insane! The food was…. Well it took forever because of the game. Evan had arranged a prix-fixe meal of their flatbread pizza and salad. The salads are wild – lettuce, hard boiled eggs, sausages, and a mayo-ranch dressing.
🚲Miles cycled: 30 wet and rainy miles
🍺Breweries: La Houblonnière Pfister, Wingersheim, and Mogwaĩ, Mundolsheim.
🥨Meals: Le Grand Tigre, Strasbourg
🏨Hotel: Hotel Tandem
Don’t miss a moment of the ✨ Sparkling Summer ✨
Read all about Paris, Taylor Swift, hiking in the alps, getting slightly lost in the Alps, cycling through wine country, drinking through wine country, and cycling AND drinking through wine country. Catch every post on my Sparkling Summer on Hi Friends It’s Laura.
Read MoreDay 2: Strasbourg to Obernai, 28 miles and great drinks
We awoke to another excellent breakfast at Hotel Tandem, then loaded our luggage into the van for our first real ride. The day began with another flat-ish ride along the river, although it started raining before we made it to the first brewery.
The first brewery was Les Intenables in Rosheim, a small brewery led by woman brewmaster, Alice. This was my second favorite brewery of the trip. Alice gave us an amazing tour of how they make beer, including a perpetual cuvée style beer they make in old wine barrels. Both Les Intenables and Les Houblonnières Pfister also make non-alcoholic soda in their vats, which made for a fun tasting of something different.
For lunch we grabbed some of Alice’s amazing cuvée sour ales and ate in the rain in a park along our route. This is one of my favorite photos from the trip. The beer reminded me of my favorite beer from here, Jolly Pumpkin’s Calabaza Blanca. The sandwich was also great.
We were all soaking wet and getting slightly tipsy, so we headed out to the first winery visit of the tour, at Domaine Fritz-Schmitt. We headed up a brutal hill to the winery, only to get back on the bikes in the rain to ride through the vineyards with the owner, Antoine.
Antoine gave us a tour of the vineyards, explaining how they grow the grapes in the region from US roots grafted with European vines. He explained that while the hops growers in the region loved the wet weather, it made it incredibly difficult for the vineyard farmers to take care of the vines with the tall, wet grass. We rode back up the hill to a wonderful tasting of their wines.
This is also where the group discovered crémant, a champagne-style French wine grown outside the Champagne Region. I loved it so much, I made a reel! (I never make reels). Crémant is becoming a much more affordable alternative to Champagne wine, and to my tastes it tasted the same. We ended up liking their wine so much we ordered several cases back to the states.
We wrapped up the day with a ride to our next hotel in Obernai. We had all drunk a lot of wine that night, so we hit the town for some dinner. A few of us went to an outdoor restaurant and ate some sort of salad/egg combination before heading back to the hotel. I do not remember the hotel at all.
🚲Miles cycled: 28 very wet miles
🍺Breweries: Les Intenables, Rosheim
🍷Wineries: Domaine Fritz-Schmitt, Ottrott
🥨Meals: no idea
🏨Hotel: A La Cour D’Alsace, Obernai: Literally do not remember this hotel at all! Rooms from $146.
Day 3: Obernai to Ribeauvillé, 32 miserable miles and a Sauerkraut Hill
Day 3 will be known as Sauerkraut Hill day. The day dawned overcast and gray, but not too rainy. We ate a middling breakfast at the hotel and hit the path and some country roads for our ride. I could ride through vineyards all day long, they are just so peaceful and beautiful. Before lunch, we rode through a small alley in a small town and got the best surprise: Window puppers!
These big lugs were just hanging out in the window getting pets from everyone. It was truly the highlight of the morning! And honestly, it was downhill from there.
Except not literally. The rain picked up so by the time we stopped for lunch at a cafe, we were all soaking wet. The cafe was packed, so there was little room to park our bikes and even less room to hang up our soaking wet gear.
Lunch was a plate of sauerkraut with various sausages on it, a delicacy in the Germany-adjacent Alsace. We filled ourselves with sauerkraut, and some wine too, why not. Some wine became a lot of wine and before you knew it we had several bottles of sparkling, white and red on the table.
And then we had to ride. Forever. Up a hill. The biggest hill of the trip. Suffice to say that after a very, very long ride in the morning, sauerkraut, sausages, and a belly full of red wine, that hill was brutal and barf inducing.
We made it to the top for our first winery stop of the day, at Dopff au Moulin. We shook out our sopping wet clothes and piled into tasting room for a quick tour and taste. Dopff au Moulin says that they are the originators of crémant wine in the region. The original Dopff went to Champagne to learn to make wine and brought the style back to Alsace, where they had similar terroir. After a few glasses of wine, we got back on the bikes…
To ride back down the hill! Y’all. I would have absolutely skipped that wine tasting if I could have skipped the hill!! I put my trusty little e-bike on turbo mode and took me up the hill pretty quickly, and down the hill even more quickly! We made our way into the charming medieval town Ribeauvillé for two nights. I’m pretty sure this is where I also got a flat tire on the way into town. Luckily Tom fixed my bike right up for me.
Tiffany and I were both spent (and probably hungover from day drinking). She found us some amazing Quiche Lorraine at a small restaurant and we hung out in the room for an early night.
🚲Miles cycled: 32 miles. 26 miserable miles, 6 easy miles
🍷Wineries: Domaine Dopff au Moulin
🥨Meals: O’berge du Parc
🏨Hotel: Hotel de La Tour, Ribeauville: This was the cutest little town! We were awoken by a horse drawn carriage that was out watering the flowers in the square. Rooms from $103.
Day 4: Blessed rest day of drinking in Ribeauvillé
Bless it – a rest day. We awoke to a very charming horse-drawn carriage clomping through the town square. It carried a water tank so they could water the flowers every morning! So charming.
I had read in my Rick Steves book that the town had guided tours every morning at 10am. I found the TI at the opposite edge of town, only to find out that the tours did not start until the following week! What a bummer. Since we were visiting in early July, I anticipated most touristy things to be open. I tried following a self-guided tour but I fizzled out quickly when the girls texted me about lunch. (Don’t forget to get an e-Sim from Airalo or similar to save on roaming fees!)
We went to the Winstub restaurant where Tiffany had gotten us dinner the night before. A winstub restaurant means that historically, the restauranteur also made his own wine to serve. Similarly a beerstub made its own beer. I drank my weight in Aperol Spritzes. Aperol Spritz index: probably 7 euros.
This lovely medieval town has a number of tasting rooms in it, although we ran into a few problems. First, they all close for lunch from roughly 11:30 to 2pm, and second, most require reservations. A google search led us to Domaine Jean Sipp, which was open soonest after lunch. We had a delightful tasting of six or seven wines while we were the only ones there. We also were able to “revisit” a few of the wines as well.
After Jean Sipp, we made our way over to Bott Freres, where the boys had gone for lunch and wine. The winery closed fairly early but they let us stay on their patio until we finished our wine. We made it through a freak rainstorm, and then headed back into town. That night in the lobby, we drank the several bottles of wine and beer we had accumulated until that point.
🚲Miles cycled: A blessed 0 miles
🍷Wineries: Domaine Jean Sipp, Bott Freres
🥨Meals: no idea
🏨Hotel: Hotel de La Tour, Ribeauville
Day 5: Ribeauvillé to Lapoutrie, 20 sunny, easy miles and Les Bleus
Finally, a sunny day! I was getting pretty tired of my cycling pants at this point so I switched to regular shorts for the day. We left the adorable town of Ribeauville for a short ride to Lapoutroie.
The ride was mostly through the rolling hills of vineyards. On a sunny day like this, I could ride forever. Everything was so peaceful and pretty. I wish our whole trip had been like this.
Our first winery visit was Vins d’Alsace Jean-Baptiste Adam Winery. We got a tour of their ancient cellars and learned all about how they originally made wine, and clean the casks. They have a little man who works there and crawls into the wine casks to clean them of the debris. No joke! His father before him had the same job, and he now continues the tradition.
I do not really remember this wine, but I’m sure it tasted great.
We continued on through the vineyards to a small brewery for a late lunch, Brasserie du Pays Welche. This is not run by Welsh people, but instead was an Alsatian term for outsider. The beer was okay, but not really to my taste. We did drink a lot of it at lunch though!
Lapoutroie was a very, very, very small town with one bar, no shops, and no real restaurants. Our hotel provided a french gourmet meal for us instead, with of course plenty of wine. After dinner, we mostly walked around petting the town cats before stopping into the bar to watch Les Bleus play the quarter final game in the Euro Cup. We expected it to be crazy like it was in Strasbourg, but it was very low key.
🚲Miles cycled: 20 miles
🍺Breweries: Brasserie du Pays Welche
🍷Wineries: Jean-Baptiste Adam
🥨Meals: Hotel Restaurant Du Faudé
🏨Hotel: Hotel Restaurant Du Faudé, Lapoutroie: Our hotel actually had two separate beds and baths, so I got my own room! My room looked out on a small garden and stream. Charming!
Day 6: Lapoutroie to Gueberschwihr, 37 long and rainy miles
The day started out warm and dry, but by the time we made it to the village of Munster it was pouring. Munster has a popular farmers market, although in the rain I did not really care to explore much. We had sandwiches, wine and cheese (Munster, ew) while standing under the portico of a church.
It was still raining as we made our way to Taal Brewery nearby. They were not able to host us for a tour, but we were able to sit and try a few pints of beer in their (dry) tasting room. I tried their Tomato beer, which was surprisingly fantastic. I definitely ordered a large beer when I only needed a small. Famous last words!
We got back on the bikes to cycle through vineyard country roads to Gueberschwihr. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel before walking up to the wine tasting for the evening at their tasting room, Scherb & Fils Family Estate. The cellar of their tasting room is centuries old – one of the oldest we were in.
This was a fun tasting because our tasting guides spoke German and French, but not English. Wendy spoke German, Peggy, Kat and I spoke French, but we couldn’t understand a word they said. At one point Peggy said that they make the wine with vegetables! That’s not how wine is made, so something was lost in translation.
Anywhoo, we drank a lot of wine and then went to dinner at our hotel. I switched to Aperol Spritzes and drank my way through dinner.
🚲Miles cycled: 37 VERY hilly miles
🍺Breweries: Taal
🍷Wineries: Scherb & Fils
🥨Meals: Hotel Belle-vue
🏨Hotel: Hotel Relais du Vignoble, Gueberschwihr: Surrounded by vineyards, this hotel was surprisingly sterile and modern inside.
Day 7: Gueberschwihr to Colmar, the last 21 miles
Our last day! We had a good little breakfast in this quirky hotel, then got on the bikes for a quick day. Today was another sunny day, so I sported my Beercycling tshirt and leggings. With such a short day, there was an optional add-on up a steep hill to visit the Three Castles of Eguisheim.
I decided to do the bike ride, which was a 15 or 20 minute ride almost straight up. At the top were three historic fortresses, now in deep disrepair. This is a popular hike in the area, or you can easily drive up as well. We toodled around the top for a little bit before bombing back down the hill to the walled city of Eguisheim.
Eguisheim was the most touristy town we were in. It’s a medieval fortress city, famed for its wall encircling the village, with concentric roads spiraling out from town. The streets were extremely crowded and it was tough navigating a bike down the cobblestone roads.
We stopped at a very cool brewery, the first in Eguisheim, run by an American. Timothy’s – Le Brasseur du Pape has a tasting room that is not currently open to the public, so this was a cool opportunity to taste all of their beers. Timothy makes the beer with his daughter, and part of this brewery are centuries old. The beer was great, and it was fun talking to Tim about why he loves beer brewing.
Once we left Eguisheim, we biked on increasingly busy streets to Colmar. After a week of riding through the countryside and small towns, I had forgotten what it was like cycling in traffic! This was the most congested riding of our entire trip. We ended up at our hotel, Ibis Styles in Colmar, before dinner.
We all freshened up and then went into town for one last group dinner along the canal. I, of course, drank Aperol Spritzes, to end the trip.
🚲Miles cycled: 20 easy but one big hill miles
🍺Breweries: Timothy’s
🥨Meals: Restaurant Pfeffel
🏨Hotel: Ibis Styles, Colmar: This is a standard chain hotel in Europe. The room was pretty nice, with a balcony. A balcony!
Day 8: Leaving Colmar back to Paris
We did not get a chance to explore Colmar much at all, which was a bummer. The town is one of the prettiest in France, and has a series of canals and rivers in the old town. I would have liked to explore more on a walking tour or gone to the Alsace Wine Museum to learn something new. Next time!
Tiffany and I left early the next morning on a train back to Paris. The train took us back to Strasbourg and then on a TGV fast train back to Paris, where we went our separate ways. I met up with my good friend and her daughter to explore Paris, and Tiffany headed home. Farewell cycling trip, hello Sparkling Summer part 2!
What to pack for Beercycling through French vineyards
I wrote a longer overview of my trip on a Beercycling tour, and I also covered a series of top questions I’ve been asked about a cycling tour through French wine country. In that, I also listed what I am glad I packed for this trip. Hint: it included a lot of rain gear!
Overall, my trip to Alsace was a great start to my Sparkling Summer trip, where I would next head to Paris and then on to Zurich, Switzerland. I can’t wait to return to go on another bicycling trip through French wine country, eat pretzels, and explore darling medieval towns.
If you’ve ever spent time in Strasbourg, Colmar, or Alsace, what was your favorite small village? What wines did you enjoy on your trip?
