Frédéric Bartholdi: The
Alsatian Beer Buying Game for Alsace (France) Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Bartholdi
is the sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty and many of the funicular
trains that go up into the Pyrénées Mountains in French Catalonia. He was born in Colmar, Alsace, which is why I
named the game after him.
I
do not know if he drank beer or not, but Alsace is a huge beer producing region
as well as a wine producing region.
I
found out about Alsace’s beer-producing regions when I lived in Stuttgart,
Germany for five years and went grocery shopping in Strasbourg, France once a
month at Auchan in Ilkirch-Graffenstaden.
That particular Auchan had a great book section as well as groceries and
home supplies.
On
one weekend grocery trip to Strasbourg (France), I found a book called La Route
de la Bière en Alsace by Gabriel Thierry and Elénore Delpierre – Itinéraires de
Découvertes.
There
is an entire culture in Eastern France devoted to beer that extends from
Northern to Southern Alsace. If you can
read French, you can use this book to plan a trip to Alsace’s Beer Country.
There
are several beer festivals listed in this book, but the big one is held in a
town of Schiltigheim, which has been brewing wine since the 14th
century. The beer festival has been held
in Schiltigheim since the 19th century.
If
you are interested in attending this festival, look at their website for
information on it, hotels, and restaurants.
There
are four breweries in Schiltigheim that might be able to arrange for tours, if
you look at their website for information:
-L’Espérance
-Adelshoffen
-Fischer
-La
Perle
Fischer
has a large brewery in downtown Strasbourg (France) that probably does tours,
if you check their website.
For
the other regions, I have listed the number of breweries in each beer-producing
region just to give an idea of how large the Alsatian beer industry is in
Alsace:
-Downtown
Strasbourg
5
Breweries
-North
of Strasbourg
5
Breweries
-Outside
Strasbourg
5
Breweries
-Haut-Rhin
5
Breweries
-Brewer
Cooperatives
4
Breweries
The
Beer Culture of Alsace (France) is relatively unknown and unexplored.
A
trip to Strasbourg for the month-long Christmas market in December might be a
good time to explore Alsace’s Beer Route and to buy some lovely French food and
wooden toys for children like Playmobil products or Kathe Wolwert Christmas
tree decorations.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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