Pages

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Frederic Bartholdi: The Alsatian Beer Buying Game for France Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books




Ruth Paget Selfie