Alsace has a medieval feel about it, from entire well preserved villages like Riquewihr to the architecture of individual buildings like the House of Heads in Colmar; wrought-iron signs above a door denoting function within down to twiddly wine glasses with coloured stems. Reading Patrick Leigh Fermor’s magisterial masterpiece A Time of Gifts about his walking tour from Rotterdam to Constantinople in 1933, the pfennig dropped.

The House of Heads

For PLF, the Road to Damascus went through Bavaria: “the characteristics I have in mind stretch further afield than South Germany: they advance down the Danube, through Austria and into Bohemia, across the mountains of the Tyrol to the edge of Lombardy and through the Swiss Alps and across the Upper Rhine into Alsace; and the real secret about the architecture of these towns is that it is medieval in structure and Renaissance – or the Teutonic interpretation of the Renaissance – only in detail.”

He makes the point “we have all invented a half-bogus golden age to embower us when we eat and drink away from home.” For the UK, this is the reign of Elizabeth I, for France the age of Rabelais and for Alsace “it’s the bearded guzzler in his harlequin haberdashery, recruited in Swabia, twirling his whiskers and shouting for another bottle. He is the walking epitome and his influence is everywhere: in the tapering coloured globes that form the stems of wine glasses, in the labels on the green and amber bottles, in the hanging metal signs that creak outside on wrought-iron stanchions… in the heavy Bacchic riot of the hewn wooden ivy that inter-twines with the vine shoots and the leaves and the clusters… It is the corroborative detail of dreamland.”

In SA, the Embowering Golden Age harks back to the Voortrekkers and their Great Trek with a dash of Louis Leipoldt thrown in for good measure: droëwors and biltong from secret roadside butcheries in improbable locations, dried fruit in lieu of vegetables, potjiekos and braais featuring skilpadjies and kaiings. Not the kind of fare you’ll find in the ersatz Versailles of the One&Only where its Nobu for nobs and Maze for the terminally confused. Even if October Horizons gives Nobu a five page spread and two reviews.

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