Fête du Vin Nouveau: Part Deux - Life in a Wine Village

Eguisheim is a wine village. In the old days, the vintners would go out from the village to tend to their vines. In the evening, they would return back to their houses in the village and lock the city gates behind them for protection. Everything they needed they would carry out with them in the morning. Everything they harvested they would bring back to the village with them in the evening.

It seems that not much has changed. As you walk through Eguisheim, you can smell wine fermenting around every corner. You can catch the odor coming out from basement windows and from the open courtyards of the farm houses. You find farm implements parked along the narrow streets amongst the old houses. The opening picture is the courtyard of a wine-maker's house. The home is to the right, the cave (where the wine is prepared) is to the back, and the barn is to the left. Picture above is small tractor parked behind a building that was built in 1652. In the wagon are the plastic tubs used to collect the harvested grapes.

The picture below also shows a wine-maker's house. In the courtyard, at the back, you can make out the stainless steel grape press ready for the next batch from the vineyard.