Our next stop was a delight. Oberkirch is a small town in
the foothills of the forest not far south of Sasbachwalden. Its many industries
include fruit growing, wine and schnapps-making, tourism, wood milling and
transportation along both the Rench River and a local network of canals.
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| Oberkirch aire |
It’s also not far from the River Kinzig and Kinzigtal
valley, the home of medieval duchies established variously by powerful abbeys
and feuding ducal families in the Middle Ages, and still boasting
mansions, enchanting public squares, tall merchant houses and traditional family
smallholdings.
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| Oberkirch – a land of produce |
Oberkirch is one of the larger towns and is the centre of
the local Ortenau wine industry so it was a little surprising that in our three
days’ stop we didn’t manage to taste a drop! We were too busy making use of our
‘guest card’ to visit the area free of charge on public transport.
The wonderful ‘konus card’ entitles you to travel on the
transport network throughout the Black Forest for free, for every day that you
are registered as a guest and paying tourist tax. As our aire was 7 euros a
night we were entitled to register at the tourist centre and collect our card.
An extremely charming young German girl helped us with tips and information. She
urged us to cycle to nearby Ringelbach and visit a small independent Schnapps
producer.
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| Uphill through plentiful orchards to Ringelbach |
We duly pedalled hard up the 9kms north above town and
were rewarded with views of local families harvesting their acres of apple,
pear, quince, apricot and plum trees. Older members were up the trees on
ladders whilst younger ones lay out and held up nets to catch the falling
fruits, and the very youngest collected the windfalls. Stopping to explore an
enchanting and picture-book apple orchard it seemed that each tree bore fruit perfectly
alike in shape and colour. We marvelled at the sheer volume of fruit and wondered
how so much of it could actually be consumed.
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| The Franz Fies schnapps tasting barrel! |
The fruit in the orchards we had seen
was largely destined for the family’s brewery which in turn supported the
livelihoods of the growers.
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| Franz Fies offerings |
Not having tried schnapps before we sampled a couple and
were amazed by their fruity intensity, but a little put off by the heat of the
typical 45% alcohol volume.
We bought two of our favourites (weaker but still
strong at 22% and 40% proof) and sailed back down the valley road to shop in Oberkirch’s excellent Edeka supermarket for treats of smoked hams
and cheeses, fresh salads and fresh egg ‘spatlze’
noodles.
