an der mosel

hard to believe it, but it's gotten to be more than a month since the end of kate's visit -- and now we'll finally finish blogging about it! our last big event was a day trip to the mosel river (or moselle, as i guess most americans spell it) to taste wine. the mosel is one of the best places in the world to grow riesling, our favorite grape. but more on that later.

the mosel flows into the rhine at koblenz, about a 45-minute train ride upstream (= south) from bonn. from there we switched trains and traveled about an hour up the mosel to the village of cochem, where we spent the day. the scenery was so gorgeous that it was worth the trip alone -- beautiful dramatic steep hills cut out by the river everywhere you look. here's a random little video p shot from the train which sort of gives you the idea.

we arrived in cochem to find this little cafe at the train station (though sadly it was closed). harry potter fans probably don't need a translation!
this was the view from the riverbank as we walked into the center of town from the station. maybe i'm just hard up for beauty after having been in chicago for so long, but i feel like i could gush about those lovely hills all day!
and here's a shot of cochem taken from the bridge spanning the river in the previous picture. the "castle" on the little hill in the left of the photo is actually not that old -- as our trusty lonely planet guide somewhat derisively puts it, it's "actually a neo-gothic pastiche built in 1877, making it a full 78 years older than disneyland".

ok, now for the important part -- the wine. it was lunchtime when we arrived, and, after asking lonely planet to find us a restaurant, we started with a glass each.after lunch we headed to our first winery of the day. there were a number of them right in town, all within walking distance of each other.we really liked the wine at this place! we've tasted a fair amount of riesling from the finger lakes region in upstate ny, but never anything like this before. delicious mineraly-peachy flavors, mmm mmm mmm. we got to chatting with the winemaker a bit (no one else was there), and afterwards he let us see his "cellar", which was a little cave in the hillside.we hit three more wineries afterwards. it was really amazing how much variety there was between the various wines (we kept our tasting focus trained solidly on dry rieslings) -- so far as we know, the vineyards for all of them are located close by, just right outside town. we especially liked the place in the picture below -- they had one of the best icewines we've ever tried!
from what we'd read beforehand, cochem was supposed to be a bit of a tourist trap, but that wasn't our experience at all (maybe because we went before the tourist season really started). it was actually quite the charming little village! and we ended up with a fine haul of wine to boot!