Alsace France Farm Visits
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Today we woke up at the hotel Diana and were served a typical French breakfast. First stop of the day was to a famous brewery, the Kronenberg. We were able to take a tour of the old plant, which is now a museum. Our tour guide even gave us some barley to try. We then walked around the old cellars and watched a video about the history of beer. At the end of the tour we were able to taste some of the beer. The 1664 Blanc tasted like “Fruity Peebles” and their standard beer, Kronenberg had more of the basic bitter taste.
Next we visited a local farmers hops field. For many of us it was our fist time seeing these vine-like plants. The farmer explained to the group how hops are harvested and that much of his crop was exported. They cut down the vines and load them into a truck before they sell them to Anheuser Busch. So next time we have a Bud Light we’ll know where the hops came from!
We ate lunch in Molshiem, and again our host Sylvain Pottier out-did himself organizing another Alsatian meal. We had pate, a new experience to many of the students. The main course was French fries, chicken and ratatouille (mixed vegetables). It was one of our nicest lunches so far. For desert we had an amazing slice of rhubarb pie.
After lunch, we drove to the town of Obernai, which was a classic small French town. The houses were all painted in different bright colors and the shops were very chic. Most students enjoyed walking around and touring the town or taking advantage of another opportunity to do some shopping.
After lunch we headed to a grain farm. We were greeted by a local farmer and his son, who talked about their experiences as farmers in Europe. We were able to see the differences between French and American farmers. The farmer had also setup a picnic table of snacks for the students. We were presented with a famous French bread with almonds and raisins and pretzels.
Our last stop of the day was a local winery in a small Alsatian village. We had the chance to walk through his winery, Albert Seltz, and learn about the wine business along with the process of making wine. It looked exactly like what you expect a winery to look like: cave-like walls, wooden barrels, and rows and rows of wine bottles. Monsanto was very kind to have bought the whole IBIP group a bottle of wine as a souvenir for us to take home!
We then ended the day with dinner back in Obernai. Our main dish shocked us all. “Choucrote” was a huge platter of all different styles of pork- bacon, tenderloin, sausages, with sauerkraut under the meat. There was at least 7lbs of meat on it for each of the tables! We all got a good laugh out of it and then dug right in. We all had some strawberry ice cream for dessert and then called it a night as we headed back to Hotel Diana.
By: Jessi Lindgren, Nikki Manning, Monika Shah, and Katie Murray
Posted by Meredith Blumthal
