1st December 2008

Here in Alsace it's pretty chilly, and we had a premature snowfall a couple of weeks back. Time for some calories:What's Cooking This Month is packed with puddings, following a recent desserts workshop here. And on the restaurant front, if you don't manage to get to Olivier Roellinger's legendary place in Brittany before he hands back his stars and closes down in just 2 weeks' time, go to Travels & Tastings for a nice bit of nostalgie.

As always, in the Recipe Archive you'll find recipes that appeared earlier on the site and in the Travels and Tastings Archive you'll find a selection of my published articles on food, wine and travel.

The vendanges are over, the vats are busily bubbling away, it's time to plan some wine tasting trips. Before you set out, consider www.winetravelguides.com, a practical online guide to France's vineyards which is a mine of info on the top growers in each of the main wine-growing regions, plus where to stay and where to eat. I wrote the three Alsace micro-regions, and there's a major update in progress for 2009.

On a recent snowy day we zipped up into the vineyards and looked in on two diametrically different domaines: Rolly Gassmann in Rohrschwihr (website under construction at www.rollygassmann.fr) and Meyer-Fonné in Katzenthal (www.chez.com/meyerfonne). They both work with the same grape varieties, but the similarities stop there. Pierre Gassmann's wines are massive, opulent and rich in residual sugar - in many years over half the estate's wines are either Vendanges Tardives or Sélection de Grains Nobles. Félix Meyer's are right at the other end of the sweetness scale, crisp and dry. Who said that there isn't an Alsace wine for everyone?

Have fun - come back soon!

PS: those tasty figs in the banner are by artist Sara Studd. Go to Sara's blog to see more of her work.