Kathleen Burk finds near perfection in rural Germany with a Michelin-starred restaurant
and fine vineyard attached
The Kaiserstuhl is an uncommonly beautiful, and uncommonly hot, area of Germany.
An extinct volcano, the hills rise above the flat Rhine plain in Baden, close to
Alsace and Switzerland. It is dotted with wine villages and criss-crossed by hikers’
and bicyclists’ trails. The wonder is that it is not better known outside of Germany.
In the middle of this beauty, in the village of Oberbergen, is the Schwarzer Adler
Estate Hotel, now more than sixty years old. You will discover that it is more than
just a hotel, or a hotel with two restaurants: it has also a vineyard, a winery
(Weingut Keller), a tasting room for their wines, and a wine shop where you can buy
them.
There have been rooms for travellers on the site since about 1780. In the beginning
it was more of a tavern with ordinary rooms to sleep in, but it was also a farm,
since every family in the Kaiserstuhl, no matter what their trade, also grew their
own vegetables. In 1893 the Keller family bought the house, and since 1950 they
have run the hotel. The hotel, which has only fourteen rooms, is quiet and well-run.
In origin, it was an old family house, and the public rooms which are in older part
of the hotel are especially beautiful, with lots of dark wood. The bedrooms are
beautifully furnished, but I did have one criticism: there was no table and chairs,
but only a coffee table and stuffed sitting-room chairs. I was there to work: I
was to visit and assess the wines of three producers in the neighbourhood, and I
needed somewhere to use my netbook. I mentioned this to the owner, Mr Fritz Keller,
and he pointed out that few people came there to work, an entirely acceptable, indeed
obvious, explanation: it is too small for a business conference and the area is
too beautiful to stay indoors. In the morning, the breakfast combined German and
Swiss influences. The breads, including a favourite of mine, big puffy pretzels,
as well as croissants, were naturally fresh and varied, whilst the spread of cheeses
and meats were what you would expect of such an hotel. But what came as a surprise,
but shows the Swiss influence, was Bircher muesli, the oats and grains soaked in
milk and some cream overnight, and served with bowls of truly fresh berries and fruits
newly cut up. And here is my second criticism: there was no Bircher muesli the
second morning, because they had run out. They should never run out.
The origin of the whole enterprise in 1893 was the Schwarzer Adler restaurant. In
fact, the motive for the purchase of the first five hectares of vineyard was to make
wines for the restaurant. From the beginning, it has striven to unite French influences,
both in food and wine, with local Baden cuisine. Indeed, this is the dominant approach
today, so that the wines the Weingut Keller makes, and the overwhelming majority
of the wines the restaurant serves, are dry. The wines mesh beautifully with the
food, rather than dominating it.
The food was wonderful. The restaurant has had a Michelin star for an unbroken forty-three
years and, whilst the restaurant was beautiful and the service impeccable, the focus
was on the food and wine. The chef, Anibal Strubinger, has cooked for the restaurant
for thirty-three of those forty-three years. My husband and I had the tasting menu
of five dishes with the accompanying wines, and it was excellent. When I came to
the monkfish – which can be a very boring fish – served in a sauce of restrained
lime and rosemary, I was stunned. It was without doubt the best dish I have ever
tasted in over thirty years of visiting Germany. I could have eaten a second portion.
And a third. Forced to move on, my husband and I were both nearly as riveted by
a crème brulée made with cream and Epoisse cheese. It was incredibly creamy and
delicious, but the unexpected aspect was that it did indeed have the crust of cold
molten sugar. It may sound bizarre, but it worked.
The wine cellar, comprising 1,800 different wines, many of them French, is notable
and award-winning. One reason for the French bias is that Fritz Keller also runs
a wine import business, begun by his father Franz Keller in 1946, which imports thousands
of cases of French wines every year. Their ‘wine treasury’ contains cases of, for
example, Petrus and Cheval Blanc, as well as the more affordable Grand Crus and wines
from every other region of France. All of Germany is, naturally, well-represented,
with some emphasis on the great wines of the Kaiserstuhl. Other countries also find
a place on the wine list, although not very large ones. In 2010, the restaurant
was deemed by a major guide to German wines, Gerhard Eichalmann’s Eichelmann 2010
Deutschlandes Weine, to have the best red wine collection in Germany, whilst the
French guide Gault Millau Deutschland 2010 awarded the restaurant’s chief sommelier,
Melanie Wagner, the title ‘Sommelier of the Year’.
The hotel actually has two eating places, the other of which is across the road.
The Winzerhaus Rebstock is a typical Kaiserstuhl country inn, a gastropub in English
terms, whose name is impossible to translate into English that is both literal and
decent: Winegrower’s House Vine. It does, however, indicate the ambience and the
quality of the wine list. As it happens, the chef, Dominique Gutleben, is the wife
of the chef of the Schwarzer Adler restaurant; the food is much less formal and
complicated, but it, too, is delicious.
The winery is also on the site. In fact, the wines are made in the back of the
hotel and restaurant building. Once made, they are taken across the road in barrels
to be aged in a 112- meter-long tunnel carved out of rock. I saw some barrels being
taken across the road, but the quiet of the hotel was hardly disturbed. The hotel
does sit on a main road, but since only about five cars an hour seem to pass, this
is not a problem. There is parking behind the hotel for guests.
What was notable was the helpfulness of the staff, from top to bottom. Two of the
other guests were bicyclists from New York, and when it was time for their departure,
the owner himself drove them to the railway station. I saw them receive a plastic
bag from the desk clerk after they had checked out, for which they thanked him; I
thought little of it until it was time for our own departure, and we also received
such a bag, which contained two bottles of water and two large apples for our journey.
Compared with the equivalent in the UK, the charges are not at all bad. A double
room costs €95 for one person and €140 for two. In the restaurant, the five-course
tasting menu cost €68 per person without the accompanying five glasses of wine and
€98 with. The menu changes daily, so it is unlikely that the monkfish dish will
re-appear – although the next time we go there to stay, I will certainly e-mail ahead
with a special request for it. In short, whilst a stay at the Schwarzer Adler Estate
Hotel and dining in its restaurant is not cheap, it is worth every euro.
Franz Keller Schwarzer Adler
Weine Restaurant Hotel
Badbergstrasse 23
D-79235 Vogtsburg-Obgerbergen im Kaiserstuhl
Germany
Tel: 0049 (0) 76 62-9330-10
Fax: 0049 (0) 76 62-9330-46:
Winzerhaus Rebstock
Tel: 0049 (0) 76 62-9330-11
Accommodation 49
Breakfast 14
Service 10
Ambience 9
Value for money 15
Total 97
