Where to stay

Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa

Grand hotel in Lichtentaler Allee park in central Baden-Baden. Austrian-born chef Paul Stradner balances the traditional (game, iced soufflés) and new-wave. Doubles from £270. Schillerstrasse 4/6, Baden-Baden, 00 49 7221 9000, brenners.com

Hotel Bareiss

Pampering is guaranteed at this welcoming hotel, which offers a full spectrum of restaurants and faultless service. Doubles from £165. Baiersbronn-Mitteltal, 00 49 744 2470, bareiss.com

Hotel Engel

Cosy restaurant-with-rooms on Sasbachwalden’s main street. Choose the ‘dinner-jumping’ menu visiting local restaurants for your various courses, or perhaps opt for Badische tapas – Schwarzwälder ham, soup in a cup, maultaschen with salmon and spinach, and cod cheeks with beet risotto. Doubles from £68. Talstrasse 14, Sasbachwalden, 00 49 7841 3000

Naturparkhotel Holzwurm

This picture-postcard address, in a 19th-century timbered house, is a member of the Naturparkhotel group, which maximises the sourcing of local products. Owner Eugen Oberle initiated the successful dinner-jumping menu. Doubles from £65. Am Altenrain 12, Sasbachwalden, 00 49 784 120 540, holzwurmwirt.de

Schloss Eberstein

A gorgeous castle-hotel above the Murg Valley. Sample gourmet cooking by chef-patron Bernd Werner in the dining room and regional specialities in Schloss Schänke, served on the delightful terrace in summer. Doubles from £120. Gernsbach, 00 49 722 499 5950, schlosseberstein.com

Travel Information

The Black Forest lies south of Karlsruhe in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine and Alsace to the west, and Switzerland to the south. Germany’s currency is the euro, and the time is one-hour ahead of the UK. The Black Forest is one of the sunniest regions in Germany with average highs in summer of 24°C and average lows of 13°C. In late spring and early autumn it can be agreeably warm. Winter can be bitterly cold, especially high up in the Black Forest, which has reliable snowfall. Total flying time is about one and a half hours from London.

GETTING THERE

Germanwings operates regular flights from London Stansted to Stuttgart. germanwings.com
Ryanair operates regular flights from London Stansted to Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden. ryanair.com
Swiss, British Airways and EasyJet operate regular flights to Basel- Mulhouse-Freiburg from London City, London Heathrow and London Gatwick respectively. swiss.com; ba.com; easyjet.com

GETTING AROUND

Konus-Karte is a guest card supplied by 142 hotels that unlocks the Black Forest’s extensive public transport network, allowing holidaymakers to benefit from free access to trains and buses. Valid almost everywhere, it lasts for the duration of your stay. For more details and to check participating routes (excludes IC and ICE trains and mountain cable cars)

RESOURCES

For travel tips and advice on seeing the region, visit:
The German National Tourist Board germany.travel/en Schwarzwald Tourismus blackforest-tourism.com

FURTHER READING

Hiking and Biking in the Black Forest (Cicerone Press, £16.95). For the more active (or anyone keen to work off a slab of that gâteau) should pocket this book all about the trails and viewpoints to be enjoyed around the region. The list is seemingly endless.

CARBON COUNTING

Return flights from London Stansted to Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden produce 0.17 tonnes of CO2, which can be offset via Climate Care at a cost of £1.26. Donations will go towards supporting environmental projects around the world. For more information, visit climatecare.org

Where to eat

Prices are for three courses, excluding wine, unless otherwise stated.

Dorfstuben

Come to this wood-panelled restaurant at Hotel Bareiss for local fare cooked and served with flair. The interior is cosy meets kitsch – and will certainly satisfy your hankering for cuckoo clocks. £28. Baiersbronn-Mitteltal, 00 49 744 2470, bareiss.com

Gasthaus Traube

An appealing country inn with rooms in the vineyards above Baden-Baden, serving local, seasonal dishes (asparagus, wild garlic, game) with a light touch. £21. Mauerbergstrasse 107, Neuweier, 00 49 722 396 820

Restaurant Bareiss

A full-on, three-Michelin-starred, multi-sensorial experience by chef Claus-Peter Lumpp. Set in a small gem of a dining room with only eight tables. Four-, six- and eight-course menus. From £96. Baiersbronn-Mitteltal, 00 49 744 2470, bareiss.com

Seidtenhof

A farmhouse kitchen-café serving classic regional dishes, as well as local ham, sausages and cheese. Try their mouth-pleasing ice cream made with their own creamy milk – flavours vary according to the season but the honey one is a must. Prices are about £11 for a main dish and an ice cream. Reichenbacherweg 46, Baiersbronn, 00 49 744 212 0895, seidtenhof.de

Wanderhütte Sattelei

Tuck into bread and dripping, hearty soups, meatloaf, maultaschen and mile-high cakes at Hotel Bareiss’s hiking hut situated high in the forest above the town of Baiersbronn. £21. 00 49 744 2470, bareiss.com/sattelei

Weinstube Schloss Staufenberg

Sample flammkuchen, sausage salad and Black Forest gâteau in a glass, all served on the terrace above vertiginous vineyards offering breathtaking views across the Rhine plain. Reservations required for parties of more than 16. £15. Durbach, 00 49 781 9246 5838

Food Glossary

Bauernbrot

Crusted country bread that is made from wheat and rye flour

Flammkuchen

An Alsace- inspired, wafer-thin, pizza-like base that is spread with soured cream, bacon and onions, and baked in a wood-fired oven

Fleischkäse

Meatloaf

Forellen

Trout, often raised in ponds fed by natural streams in the Black Forest

Grauer burgunder

Pinot gris

Knöpfli, Spätzle

Gnocchi-like pasta – an obligatory accompaniment for game dishes

Maultaschen

Large, square ravioli with a minced meat and herb filling

Saibling

Arctic char, raised in ponds throughout the Black Forest

Schwarzwälder schinken

Protected Designation of Origin cured and smoked ham, the best from small artisan butchers

Spargeln

Asparagus, mainly mighty white spears

Spätburgunder

Pinot noir

Weisser burgunder

Pinot blanc

Wild

Game

Wurstsalat

Sausage salad with gherkins and a mustardy dresssing

Zander

Pike-perch, a firm freshwater fish

Food and Travel Review

On first acquaintance, the Black Forest in the southwest of Germany seems so stuffed with clichés – comely waitresses in dirndls, mile-high cakes groaning with cherries, chocolate, Kirsch and cream, cuckoo clocks and dense, dark pine forests – it can feel like something out of a fairy tale. But once you start exploring the Schwarzwald, it becomes apparent that far from being some kind of Disney Deutschland, this place is for real.

Dirndls turn out to be not just pretty but practical, and worn with pride; cakes are made with love and local ingredients. In the fabled forest you’ll find no hobgoblins, though in late summer and autumn you will come across mushroom-hunters armed with baskets full of chanterelles and ceps. Even the cuckoo clocks are authentic – collectors’ pieces that have been crafted since the 1700s.

The Romans settled here about 2,000 years ago, laying long straight roads, planting vines and exploiting the abundant hot springs to bathe their rheumatic Latin limbs. Thanks to them, the Black Forest got its name – they dubbed it Silva Nigra. Situated in today’s state of Baden-Württemberg just across the Rhine from Alsace, it occupies an area about 150km long and some 40km wide, stretching from Karlsruhe in the north to its southernmost point where it nudges right up against Switzerland. The region continues to have massive pulling power – though nowadays visitors are more likely to arrive from points north than from Rome. Scandinavians, Brits, Alsatians and those from less blessed parts of Germany all come here to hike, bike, ski or snowshoe, to take the waters or soak up the sun. And, not surprisingly, to eat and drink.

A pocket guide to the food and wine culture of this singular region opens by reminding readers that: ‘Wherever the vine grows, good food is to be had.’ Baden-Württemberg, with the Black Forest at its heart, is no exception. Germany’s highest concentration of Michelin stars (52 in total) is here, while Baden’s wines have long since advanced beyond a local audience to capture international plaudits.

‘When I started out,’ says chef Bernd Werner of Schloss Eberstein, high above the magnificent Murg valley, ‘people from Baden used to drive to Alsace to eat. Now the traffic goes in the other direction. This is because we can match the quality and our prices are more reasonable.’ The number of French-registered cars parked outside his Michelin-starred hotel-restaurant confirms this.

But Michelin stars tell only a tiny part of the culinary tale, and the trail to excellence leads straight back to the surrounding forests, streams, farms, gardens, orchards and vineyards. As we pull away from Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden airport we spot the first of countless asparagus fields, their light sandy soils mounded up to keep the spears pearly white. Over lunch at Brenners Park-Restaurant in the spa town of Baden-Baden, chef Paul Stradner acknowledges that the white variety rules around here, though he uses some green too: like a sublime ‘raft’ of alternating white and green asparagus floating on a mousseline sauce with tomato compote. One of the seasonal delights on the springtime vegetarian menu.

As spring cedes to summer, asparagus gives way to plump black cherries and blood-red Morellos, many ending up in the emblematic gâteau. Café König in Baden-Baden is one of Baden-Württemberg’s best and has a cake line-up that changes daily – about 40 varieties throughout the year. Schwarzwälder kirschtorte, Black Forest gâteau, is unfailingly present. We place our order, find a table and observe the fleets of waitresses, as they shuttle between display and dining room, marvelling at the sheer quantity and quality of cakes and confectionery being consumed. Slender ladies, suited businessmen, girlfriends, Oma and Opa (Granny and Grandpa) out for a teatime treat with the grandchildren – all are engaged in the single-minded pursuit of sweet pleasures. Any fears for the future of the grand-old German tradition of kaffee und kuchen (coffee and cake) are laid to rest.

While some of the local fruit is used in the region’s diverse tortes and glistening fruit tarts, plenty more is destined for the still. Distilling is in the DNA of the Black Forest. In Durbach, in the Ortenau region south of Baden-Baden, we look in on Robert Wörner, one of 298 artisan distillers in this village of about 3,800 inhabitants. From June onwards, a profusion of cherries, pears, plums, quince, apples and bilberries tumbles out of his five-hectare orchard, from which he makes more than 16 different fruit spirits.

Kirsch is the big seller but Robert’s favourite is pear brandy made from the intensely aromatic Williams pear. He pours a measure into a balloon glass. ‘Don’t chill schnapps,’ he admonishes, ‘or you’ll lose the aroma.’ I swirl, sniff, sip and sigh my appreciation: the essence of pure pear captured in a bottle.

Whereas in some parts of the world consumption of spirits is declining, the Black Forest habit of downing a drop (or three) is alive and well. Dotted around the villages and at strategic points along hiking paths are Schnapsbrunnen, brandy fountains: stone or wooden troughs filled with bottles of kirsch and apple brandy, refreshed by a trickle of spring water. Thirsty passers-by drop a few coins into a battered tin and help themselves. No-one appears the worse for drink, nor do they take off with the bottles.

‘People don’t overdo it,’ Alexander Trauthwein, our host in Sasbachwalden, assures me. ‘Of course, after five Brunnen they’re in a pretty good mood, but that’s all.’ Fruit spirits are fundamental to the Black Forest, and beer from myriad local breweries more than holds its own – look out for brews from the Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu, winners at the 2014 World Beer Awards. However, Baden’s wines are increasingly its trump card. Terrific terroirs, reduced yields, precision winemaking, reining in of residual sugar levels in white wines and judicious use of new oak for reds are some of the factors that have put them on any serious wine lover’s map. ‘Twenty years ago, 70 per cent of our wine list was French; now 70 per cent is from Baden,’ remarks Jürgen Fendt, sommelier at the three-Michelin- starred Restaurant Bareiss in Baiersbronn, and a finalist in several Sommelier du Monde competitions.

At the Baden-Baden winegrowers’ co-operative, cellarmaster Christoph Zeidler leads us through a range of well-made, keenly priced riesling, sauvignon blanc, grauburgunder (pinots gris) and spätburgunder (pinot noir). For another take, we schedule a visit to Schloss Staufenberg, high above Durbach. True to form, it looks like a fairy-tale castle but is actually a working winery.

Seated on the huge terrace with successive waves of vines falling away steeply beneath our feet, we sample elegant, rapier-sharp riesling and finely structured spätburgunder as the sun sinks slowly behind the single spire of Strasbourg’s distant cathedral. The menu in the castle’s self-service Weinstube features real down-to-earth Black Forest fare – flammkuchen (a pizza-like snack borrowed from Alsace), fragrant, smoky Schwarzwald ham, maultaschen (filled parcels of noodle dough), spätzle (egg noodles) topped with caramelised onions, the obligatory wurstsalat (sausage salad) and loaves of fragrant, well-crusted rye and wholewheat bread.

Wurst und brot, sausages and bread: the two things expatriate Germans get misty-eyed about when exiled abroad. Alexander Trauthwein readily admits that what swung his decision to settle in Sasbachwalden was the presence in the town of two of the region’s finest food craftsmen: Martin Maier, five-star master butcher, and Klaus Oberle, jovial award-winning baker at Becke-Klaus.

We visit both these artisans, heroes of the farm-to-table culture that remains impressively strong. The animals whose meat goes into Maier’s celebrated hams and sausages all come from within a 20km radius and are slaughtered in his state-of-the-art abattoir behind the shop. For Oberle, the organic rye, wheat and spelt used for his 20-plus bread selection at Becke-Klaus is all grown and milled locally; for some loaves, he even grinds the grain himself.

As families around Sasbachwalden and the neighbourhood settle down to their traditional evening meal – which can be a vesper (a rustic platter that’s also eaten as a snack) – it’s a fair bet that Maier’s Schwarzwald ham, bacon and sundry sausagery will be on the table. Perhaps served alongside a few slices of Oberle’s robustly crusted, loose-crumbed sourdough.

Sasbachwalden boasts not only a superior butcher and baker but also some fine places to dine. Strung out along the picture-postcard main street, lined with whitewashed, black-timbered houses, is a delicious parade of restaurants (they call it the Genussmeile, the pleasure mile), from simple and homely to Michelin-starred.

To test the talents of the local chefs, we sign up for a sort of restaurant crawl. The ‘dinner-jumping’ menu means eating each of your courses in a different establishment.

At Hotel Engel, the starter of bite-sized morsels includes salmon tartare, slivers of pink duck breast with chanterelles and a thimbleful of asparagus soup. We then totter along the street (resisting the village schnapsbrunnen en route) to Hotel Talmühle, where the chef offers pike-perch and char with lentils, followed by melting shoulder and fillet of summer venison from local hunts. Dinner ends at the Holzwurm with a delicate parfait perfumed with elderflowers from the hedgerows. Good food, good fun and a heartening demonstration of team spirit among the local chefs.

After the hushed elegance of Baden-Baden and the vineyards of the Ortenau, we take the Black Forest High Road to Baiersbronn. The town is made up of nine villages, dotted around a tranquil farming valley with a patchwork of lush meadows and shading of dark green forests. Its twin claims to fame are high-class eating (two restaurants holding two Michelin stars and two with three) and top- class hiking (almost 1,000km of mapped paths). Luckily, the tourist office has combined both so that you can stretch your legs in the valley, stopping to taste specialities at a selection of farms along the route. Standouts are an air-dried lamb, cured in the same way as Black Forest ham by butcher Joachim Koc, and spectacular ice cream, perfumed with aromatic pine honey, made by Mario and Cornelia Zimmermann with milk from their herd of Simmental cows.

There are many places to stay in Baiersbronn but none quite match Hotel Bareiss for its understated luxury, attentive but unobtrusive service, top-notch spa facilities, a breakfast buffet to die for and an artist’s palette of restaurants to suit all tastes and every occasion. You want scrubbed pine tables, draught Alpirsbacher beer, meatloaf and maultaschen? Then wander up to the Sattelei forest hut where the only sounds are your fellow hikers, birdsong and the soughing of wind in the treetops. Or book a table for supper in the Dorfstuben, watched over by antique cuckoo clocks (the cuckoos are mercifully mute). You could also sample Claus-Peter Lumpp’s fabled cuisine, which takes the best of the local ingredients – vegetables and fruit from the Ortenau, herbs from the hotel’s Morlokhof garden, trout from the Buhlbach River, venison culled by Hermann and Hannes Bareiss, lamb from the nearby Schwäbischen Alb – and weaves them into a multi-sensorial menu that leaves you stunned and smiling.

Before you depart the Black Forest, you should take a leaf out of the Romans’ book and treat yourself to a rejuvenating session at Baden-Baden’s Friedrichsbad. The sum of £19 (£28 if you go the whole hog with the highly recommended soap and brush massage) guarantees you three hours of bliss as you move through a succession of warm and still warmer rooms towards the inner sanctum – the glittering, mosaic-clad, colonnaded central thermal bath into which you hurl yourself with reckless abandon. Then the whole process winds back down again with further spells at ever- diminishing temperatures, ending up in a darkened room where you lie, cocooned, on a bed and drift off to the strains of Mozart. A genuine taste of rest and relaxation, Schwarzwald-style.