Wineries along the Romantic Road
 

I'm heading to Germany in September of this year, and after the first day of Oktoberfest in Munich, we're heading north along the Romantic Road (generally). My wife is a HUGE wine fan - and I'm a casual admirer - so I'd like to visit a nice German winery while we're over there. Does anyone know of a good winery to visit in that area? Anywhere from Munich to Frankfurt would be good.

We come from Missouri where there are a lot of "German-themed" wineries, and I'd love to see what an authentic Germany winery (or two or three) is like. The quality of the experience is at least as important as the quality of the wine.

Thanks for all your help!

From my two trips along the Romantic Road i did not see any vineyards except for those in and around Wurzburg, on the northern part of the road.

Relatively few parts of Germany (and France) have vineyards.

While we have no personal experience with this winery, we did spend 3 days in Iphofen a couple of years ago. It's a lovely little wine village with one of the top wineries in the area. I think it will definitely meet your criteria.

There isn't an English translation available for their website, but you could email them for details:

http://www.wirsching.de/
eMail: [email protected]

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractio...n_Bavaria.html

If you decide to stay in Iphofen, I can highly recommend the Gasthof Zum Hirschen:

http://www.hirschen-iphofen.de/

One of our Iphofen photos:

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/135...11574650EfkKBF

The Franken wine district is on your route back to Frankfurt. It starts east of Würzburg and runs out from the banks of the Main river to somewhat west of Aschaffenburg. I lived in Aschaffenburg but never visited a vineyard so I have no first hand information. See http://www.weinland-franken.de/start.php for plenty, if you read German.

You could also go southeast of Mainz to the Rheinhessen wine district. There are also vineyards between Stuttgart, Mannheim, and Karlsruhe.

I happened to be in Stuttgart many years ago at the end of a wine festival. It was better than Oktoberfest, but on a smaller scale so I met a lot of locals who were hell bent on drinking up the crop before it got shipped out. There are directories to the festivals and there are plenty of them.

We'll be in Würzburg in September also and I've been looking at this property:

http://tinyurl.com/nmphe9

Sounds pretty nice.

Except in the Main valley, the "romantic road" runs through uplands with climate unsuitable for wine growing.