Attention, Wine Lovers: Here's the Oldest White Wine in The World

In the Strasbourg city center, not far from the Cathedral, there is a special place for wine lovers, Hospital’s Historic Cellar . This post about it and how to visit it.

Wine lovers, aware!

1. A bit of history

The Strasbourg’s Civil Hospital covering an area of more than 32 hectares and is a real autonomous city with its own streets, squares, monuments and sculptures.

In the 14th century, the hospital got into the habit of charging fees for the care provided to winegrowers through a portion of the harvest or in their grape plots. After awhile it became the largest owner of wine-growing lands in Alsace!

2. How to visit the historic cellar

Self-guided, free visit

Duration: approximately 30 min, no tasting, but you’ll see all the same, as on the guided tour.

Rent an audio guide, it is great and cost around 4 euro (French / English / German / Italian / Spanish / Japanese / Hungarian / Russian and Alsatian languages).

Guided tour

This kind of tour lasts about 1.5 hour. You’ll listen to the local who is passionate about the wine and might even works at the cellar, as our guide, and do wine tasting. (If you are with kids, they will be served same wine pairing, just with a grape juice instead of wine).

This tours are available for groups by reservation. (For us it was provided by our association, “Americans in Alsace” :))

**Alsace mostly process white wines, on the picture two of them and a sparkling wine**

During the tour we learned about Civil Hospital historic wine cellar, growing and processing, and tasted several wines:

**Historic wine caves are must visit place for the wine lovers!**

3. The oldest white wine

The barrel at the further end of the historic cellar is filled with 300 liters of wine from 1472, the oldest white wine stored in a barrel in the world:

Pictured below: bottle filled with the oldest wine, dating back to the year 1472:

**You can note the distinctive slender shape of the Alsatian wine bottle**

This wine has only been served three times in five centuries, the last time in November 1944 to General Philippe Leclerc, liberator of the city of Strasbourg:

**One of several places you can stop by during the tour of the caves**

4. Discovering the size and shape of alsacian wine bottle

Unlike sturdier Burgundy and Bordeaux counterparts, alsatian slender bottles possess a fragile nature:

It’s believed that due to their primary transportation route along the Rhine River, accommodating as many bottles as possible within the hull of smaller ships navigating shallow waters was crucial.