Fête des Vignerons d'Eguisheim is one of the wine festivals that anchors the Alsace calendar, drawing both local visitors and international wine travellers each year. It is held at Place du Château in 68420 Eguisheim, in the heart of one of France's most distinctive wine areas. It is an annual event with an established local audience and a consistent place in the regional calendar.
The oldest wine festival in Alsace, held the last weekend of August. Over 8,000 visitors each year. Cellars and courtyards open across the village for tastings of Eguisheim grape varieties (Riesling, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, Muscat) paired with Alsatian specialties. Sunday features a large folk procession with twinned towns from across the world. French wine festivals typically combine producer tastings with food pairings, music, and a strong sense of place. Visitors can expect access to wines from a range of producers in the appellation, alongside food stalls offering regional specialities, masterclasses or vineyard walks for those who want to learn more, and an opportunity to buy direct from the cellar at producer prices. The event is organised by Syndicat Viticole d'Eguisheim, which sets the tone and direction of the programme each year.
Alsace is the only French region that routinely labels its wines by grape variety, with Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Gris and Muscat producing aromatic dry whites along the eastern flank of the Vosges. The region's flower-decked half-timbered villages — Riquewihr, Eguisheim, Ribeauville, Kaysersberg — are connected by the Route des Vins, France's oldest signposted wine road. Wine tourism here runs strongly through summer and into the harvest period, and the appellation also produces around a quarter of France's Cremant under the AOC Cremant d'Alsace, alongside late-harvest Vendanges Tardives and Selection de Grains Nobles.
The 2026 edition is scheduled for Last weekend of August 2026 (dates TBC). Entry is free, with optional paid tasting passes or guided sessions available on site. Full programme, ticketing and updated information are published on the official site at https://www.ot-eguisheim.fr/fete-des-vignerons.html. Visitors are advised to check directly with the organiser for the latest schedule, as French festival programmes are sometimes updated close to the event date.
Visitors typically reach Alsace via Strasbourg or the Mulhouse-Basel airport, with Colmar serving as the central base for the Wine Route. The festival sits well alongside cellar visits across the Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin, the storks of Hunawihr, the Unterlinden Museum, and an Alsatian gastronomy of choucroute garnie, baeckeoffe, tarte flambee, munster cheese and kugelhopf. Late spring and early autumn give the most pleasant weather for vineyard walking; winter brings the famous Alsace Christmas markets in Colmar, Strasbourg and Riquewihr.
