Bernkastel-Kues

This morning's stop was in the twin cities... Bernkastel is a small village on one side of the river and Kues is its larger counterpart on the other.  They just ran out of room on the on side because the hills rise steeply from the river.  Viticulture was the first big industry... now tourism has taken over.

We began with a walk through town...old half-timber houses, narrow streets, and a main square which had been turned into the Christmas market were the highlights.  When I say narrow, I do mean narrow. 


an Advent calendar house



pointed house...one room wide

 

Two blocks from the river, you are into the vineyards.  There is a famous wine from here -- Doctor Wine.  The archbishop was sick and medicine wasn't helping, but the local wine cured him, so they called it Doctor Wine.   Today there is only one vineyard that is allowed by law to make this wine.

Doctor vineyard

After our tour we crossed the bridge into Kues... and went to the basement of the former church, hospital and old-age home.  They have converted St. Michael's Hospital into a Vinotech... a place to learn about German wines.  After a briefing about how to read the labels, we were turned loose to explore cellars containing more than 100 wines.  We could sample anything in the cellar!!!  It was interesting because they has riesling wines ranging from dry (3-5 g/l of residual sugar) to syrupy (the sweetest had 125g/l of residual sugar).  The neat thing was each bin had a label with all the details about the wine, so you could see what terms like trochen (dry) and spatlaese (late harvest) mean.

As we sailed away we got a good look at the castle ruins high above the city.