Wine
The vineyards along the Romantic Road stretch from Würzburg on the river Main to Wertheim and from there along the river Tauber as far as Rothenburg, crossing the borders of Franconia, Baden and Württemberg along the way.
Of a total cultivated area of 1400 hectares, 65% are planted with white wine varieties and 35% with red wine grapes. Müller Thurgau and Silvaner are the most common grape varieties for white wine, whilst for reds the range includes Schwarzriesling (Pinot Meunier), Kerner, Bacchus, Auxerrois, Riesling, Ruländer (Pinot Gris), Scheurebe, Traminer, Gewürztraminer, Blauer Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir), Dornfelder, Domina, Regent and Acolon. Other wines that do well in the mineral rich Muschelkalk (musselchalk) soil of the Tauber Valley are Weissherbst (a varietal rosé), and Schillerwein and Rotling, both made from mixed red and white grapes. The star varietal along the Romantic Road is, however, the ‘Tauberschwarz’, given its name in 1726 by Count Carl Gustav of Hohenlohe Weikersheim: thought to have died out, it was finally rediscovered in the 1980s.
Beer
‘Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalt´s’ (‘God preserve the hops and the malt!” – often heard as a jovial toast). The decree enacted at the meeting of the Bavarian Estates in 1516 is the oldest food legislation in the world still in force today.
Even to this day, beers in Germany must be made exclusively from malt, hops, barley and water. Making the quality of beer a ‘justiciable’ matter goes back to a decree of the City of Augsburg in 1156. In the ‘Justitia Civitatis Augustensis’, infringements involving the quality of the beer were punishable by a fine, with repeated offences incurring the withdrawal of the offender’s brewing licence. Some 30 breweries along the Romantic Road continue to produce a wide variety of beers in accordance with the self-same German Purity Law (‘Reinheitsgebot’), ranging from the traditional ‘Helles’ lager, pilsner and wheat beer to unfiltered ‘Zwickel’ lagers and pale ale, as well as the darker, malty, seasonal ‘bock’ beers.
Brandies
Distillation (lat. destillare: ‘drip’ or ‘trickle’, ‘distil’ from stilla ‘droplet’, ‘drop’) is a thermal separation process involving the harvesting of a volatile liquid or separation of a solvent from less easily vaporisable substances, and subsequent collection by condensation.
The slopes of the Tauber Valley and the Frankenhöhe uplands provide the ideal conditions for a variety of fruit to thrive. Brandies based on apple, pear, Williams Christ pear, quince, damson, sweet and sour cherry, sloe, mirabelle plum, raspberry, blackberry, rowan berry, elderberry, grape, pomace and meadow herbs are all produced in local artisan distilleries.
