Wine tasting in Bavaria vs. bus wine tour

I prefer to stay on the bus and enjoy the wine, as my dad is barely mobile. Plus, have you ever tried carrying a 180 pound man when you're tipsy? Bad idea.

Well, you're in luck because you're staying in Franconia, a sort of subregion of Bavaria with a its own identity and a love of wine. I suggest you catch a train to a smallish wine town in wine country - like IPHOFEN (pronounced IPP-hoe-fun) - where you can visit a Vinothek, have a nice meal, and check out one of Bavaria's charming and mostly-secret walled towns.

Franconian Vinotheques

Iphofen photo gallery

Iphofen information

Direct, hourly trains connect Nuremberg's main station with Iphofen.

I'll second the Franken wine region. Not sure when you will visit, but maybe a Weinfest? I buy wine from this region every year. The wine tasting if you let it can put you under the table. You don't have to take any tour. I would suggest buying a least six bottles though. If you know which Winzer I would call ahead. An overnight is a good idea...

https://www.fraenkischer-weinfestkalender.de/termine/
https://www.winzerhof-kessler.de/
https://weingut-baumann.de/

Just returned from Germany, and had a great time just drinking local wines at the cafes. Here in CA, I'm a red wine, Pinot Noir, affectionado , [have several Healdsburg/Sonoma wine club memberships]. However, I was wowed by the dry [white] German Reislings, and most of them were 4.5 Euros for a very generous pour. How do they make such great wine so cheaply? Bottled water costs more!

Thanks for the ideas!

How do they make such great wine so cheaply? Bottled water costs more!

It's quite easy, it's that CA wines are horrifically overpriced because wine is "fancy". In many wine-growing regions of Germany, it's an everyday drink and the prices reflect that.

Anyway, seconding the recommendations to go to a Franconian wine town. A bus tour with only 3 tastings sounds like a waste of time and money when you could go to a winery restaurant or wine bar and sample a bigger variety in a comfier location.

If you consider Iphofen I can recommend the following vine estate
https://www.wirsching.de/en/courtyard-and-vinotheque/

Have I been there? No, but I did an online wine-tasting hosted by Andrea Wirsching during first Corona lockdown in Germany. Drinking excellent wine (that has been send before the session) and listen to the stories about the region, vineyards and wines was good fun.

How do they make such great wine so cheaply?

it's an everyday drink and the prices reflect that.

It's a little more complicated than that. You see, it's not the producers jacking up the price because it's fancy, it's our government, in their benevolence, highly taxing alcoholic beverages to keep us from buying too much of it. They don't want us spending all of our money on alcohol, so they make it expensive. (Kind of "Catch-22).

I haven't done much of this in a while, but I used to go into stores in Germany just to see what the Germans pay for things. I don't remember exactly what I found, but one thing I seem to remember was finding good Scotch for under $10 (equivalent) in German stores. On my last trip to Germany (2017) I stayed in a Ferienwohnung and had to shop for groceries. I regularly brought home 750ml bottles of some pretty good Franken white wine for 2,99€! And at the checkout at German grocery stores, where in the US they display candy and gum, over there they have small bottles of Jägermeister.

But getting back to the subject of wine tours, in 2008, I visited a winery in Chochem. I tasted two vintage years of two varieties of wine (4 total). But why? If I somehow planned to buy some of their wines for my wine cellar, I guess tasting them to see what I wanted to purchase would have been a good idea, but I wasn't on a buying tour. And then one day, I had lunch in Bernkastel, and tried three different wines off of the menu. I think one was a Riesling, one was a Grauburgunder, and one was a Beerenauslese. I think I learned more from that lunch than I did a the winery tasting.

Bavaria is more for beer tasting. Do the Rhineland for wine tasting.

If you consider Iphofen I can recommend the following vine estate

I agree that Wirsching is the first address in Iphofen. No wonder, they have the largest share of the best local wine yard, the Julius-Echter-Berg. In a couple of weeks I will return there and stock up. Still, I'd like to mention two remarkable smaller wine makers in Iphofen who specialize in organic wine making, Bausewein and Weigand. Both run a small Hotel, too.

Bavaria is more for beer tasting.

Well, we are speaking of Franconia here. Which is divided in "Wein-Franken" (west) and "Bier-Franken" (east).

You're over thinking this.

You will be in Nuremberg. There are a number of very quaint wine bars on the stretch along the Pegnitz (the river that runs thru the old city). Look for a winestube. There's a very good one, serves local wines and beers, in the Trodelmarkt (a historic shopping area of small boutiques on an island in the middle of the river). Trodelstuben sits on a corner, has outside seating when the weather is good, is quaint, picturesque, and fashionable. It's been there "forever". It's not my favorite place to eat, but the food is good.

The Trodelmarkt is a 5 minute walk from the Hauptmarkt (the open air market that everyone knows). The walk along the Pegnitz is a major shopping and social area, and is well lit and busy until late at night.

There are a number of wine shops in Nuremberg, but you'll find that, even if they have a bar, they're not what it appears your daughter is looking for.

Most local towns have festivals based on the region. In northern Bavaria you'll find weinfests, usually in the spring. These are 3-5 day events, so you may not be able to attend. But if you can I recommend going. The area around Wurzburg (about 1 hour by train from Nuremberg) is wine country and has a number of them in season.

Last, if you go out of the city and want to find a place in one of the smaller towns just Google "weinstube" and you'll probably find one.