Alsace, the Jura and Savoie Study Guide

Throughout the entire Middle Ages, Alsace was a province of the Germanic Holy Roman Empire.  France developed into a centralized national state in the 15th and 16th centuries, a position which brought them into direct conflict with the Spanish Hapsburg house, a branch of Europe’s most powerful dynasty.  The French-Hapsburg rivalry catapulted the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) in Europe from a localized German religious dispute into a general European war for political dominance.  In 1639, French armies seized a majority of the region of Alsace to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Spanish Hapsburgs.  The Treaty of Westphalia concluded the war in 1648 and cemented France’s ownership of Alsace until Germany claimed the territory with Lorraine at the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Alsace-Lorraine enjoyed an extremely brief period of total independence as the abdication of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm brought the end of World War I, but French troops quickly moved on Alsace-Lorraine and its capitol, Strasbourg, and re-incorporated the region into the country within a month.  Despite a short occupation by Nazi Germany in the early 1940s, Alsace remains French.  

Winegrowing in Alsace dates to the first millennium.  160 Alsatian villages were growing the vine by the year 1000, a trend that peaked in the 16th century.  The brutal Thirty Years’ War demolished winegrowing in the region and the political instability of the following 300 years repressed the resurgence of the vine.  French control following World War I reasserted viticulture in Alsace, yet many of the region’s current vineyards date to 1945 and after.  1945 also marks the beginning of a divergence in French and German winemaking