Christoph Wolber at his winery,
Wasenhaus, in Staufen.
76 TRAVEL+LEISURE | OCTOBER 2019
told me as we sat in his winery’s new sunlit tasting
room. “Our first summer, they had a huge party
with hundreds of bikers. Silke and I had to drive
through in the evenings because we were
harvesting grapes, and they’d take flashlights and
look in the car to make sure we weren’t police.”
I tasted a number of Shelter vintages under
the watchful eye of Ira, Hans-Bert and Silke’s fox
terrier, who clearly would have preferred I do
something more useful, like hurling a tennis ball
so he could tear after it. Espe’s top Pinot Noir
comes from a single two-acre plot of the nearby
Bienenburg vineyard. The 2016 was impressively
fragrant, full of herbs and dark raspberry
notes; the 2007 was leafier and more savory,
like autumn in a glass.
After the tasting, we drove out to the vineyard,
whose landscape, Espe explained, was typical of
the region: small terraces of vines on the hillside,
forest above, cornfields below. The vine leaves
were just turning to fall colors, blending yellow
and scarlet and green. Past them, stands of ferns
were flame-orange, and on the flats, the corn
rows lay green. Beyond that, just as the land started
to rise, was a scattering of beech trees that
burned golden bronze; the pines on the far hills
in the distance rose darker and deeper green
above them. It was outrageously beautiful,
all this Blätter-Färbung. Ungraceful as it may
sound, that’s the German term for fall foliage;
the word translates as “the coloring of the leaves.”
(German inventiveness with nouns can’t be beat.)
But fall’s beauty isn’t all scarlet and gold.
Early the next morning I took a break from grapes
and drove eastward into the Schwarzwald,
or Black Forest, to the town of Baiersbronn.
Baiersbronn is a paradox. Quaint and tiny,
it has all the appropriate Black Forest trappings:
the brown-shingled, whitewashed houses that
practically shout “charming historic Germany,”
the flower boxes on the balconies overflowing
with blooms. Yet it’s also one of the country’s
preeminent culinary destinations, with a total of
eight Michelin stars (10, if you count Le Pavillon
in nearby Bad Peterstal-Griesbach) in a town
of only 15,000 people. Three of those stars
belonged to my destination, Schwarzwaldstube,
at the Hotel Traube Tonbach.
But before I ate anything, I needed to take
a wild-herb hike through the woods.
In fact, I’d suggest that anyone headed to
Baiersbronn do the same. The hikes can be
arranged easily with the local tourism office,
the landscape is magnificent, and grazing on
herbs plucked pathside is a nice counterbalance
to multi-Michelin-starred (Continued on page 102)