The wine tale

One thing that hubby and I noticed while traveling in Germany is that there are vineyards everywhere. When in Europe most people always think of French or Italian wines, but Germany has its fair share of vineyards too. It is so amazing where they put them. On the super steep hillsides where you would think that the people who harvest them would need to be part mountain goat!! These two pictures were from the Rhine River Cruise.

Rhine River wine is extremely tasty although that is probably not the correct thing to say for wine connisouers! On our cruise we even went to a wine tasting and tried the ice wine or eiswein. This is a very sweet dessert wine. The grapes are picked when they are frozen on the vine. The sugars from the grapes do not freeze, but the water does and therefore you get a smaller concentration of wine. Plus it also makes it more expensive!! The owner told us that there had been a few times when the grapes never did freeze or it froze really late which has happened even after the new year.
These next few pictures are on the Bodensee (Lake Constance). Off to the left is Austria, and straight across is Switzerland.

Grapes waiting to be harvested, and hubby checking out some grapes. We also bought some grapes and had them as a snack when we headed up north the following day. They were soooo sweet and good!

I had to laugh when I saw this truck when we were heading up north. I made sure that hubby got next to it so I could take a picture of it. The basic translation that I made from it reads, "Of course I am slower than you are. I am hauling your spanish red wine home." The google translation on this is funny! I understand why my cousins laugh when I translate something. One interesting note is that all trucks have to stay on the right side and can only go a certain speed somewhere I believe between 45-55. They only time they can pass is when they pass another truck that is going slower then they are! Pretty interesting.

So, you go from the vineyards to the truck to this waiting for us when we arrived up north.

Doesn't this look so pretty? My cousin Ramona did this for us. What more could you ask for......wine and chocolates!!!!!