Castroville, TX

The steeple of the Catholic church founded by colonists from the Alsace region of France dominates the town square of Castroville, Texas—the first clue to the town’s French heritage.

A handful of people in the town of 2,100 still speak the Alsatian language—an unwritten German dialect—and many cook traditional dishes from the province on the Rhine in France.

While Alsace is famous for its vineyards and wineries, the colonists who arrived in Texas in 1844 found their new fields more suitable for corn. They did make wine from the wild mustang grapes along the Medina River and the sweet red berries of the agarita, a prickly shrub in the barberry family. Gerald Kempf and other locals still pick those fruits, carrying on a 150-year-old home winemaking tradition.

“With me, it’s sort of a guess-what process,” says Kempf, who makes wine from wild or cultivated grapes and other fruits. He has used figs, pears, even pomegranates from the 60-year-old bush behind the farmhouse his grandfather built.

Kempf says some Castroville winemakers get scientific, adjusting their recipes to compensate for sugar content and other factors in a particular year’s crop.

Kempf crushes his fruit with a Louisville Slugger he used as a high school baseball coach, adds a specified amount of sugar, and ferments it in five-gallon glass jugs. He adds prepared yeast to some batches and relies on the fruit’s natural yeast for others.

“I do the same thing every year, but the wine will never be the same. I enjoy that,” Kempf says.

Using recipes passed down for generations, holiday cooks make New Year’s bread, a lightly sweetened yeast concoction, and pastette, a hearty marinated-pork pie.

An Alsatian-style dinner of sausage stuffed by locals using a century-old recipe highlights the annual festival held each August by the St. Louis Catholic Church.

The settlers named the town for founder Henri Castro, a member of a prominent French Jewish family. Castro recruited French colonists after obtaining a land grant from Sam Houston and the Texas government in 1842.

Located in a bend of the Medina River, Castroville is a short drive west of San Antonio. A self-guided Chamber of Commerce walking tour highlights some 30 historic homes and other points of interest.

The historic pioneer homes are simple buildings of thick limestone blocks and rot-resistant bald cypress wood, with asymmetrical roofs typical of Castroville and other Alsatian settlements nearby.

Mutzie Suehs, a former mayor and charter member of the Castro Garden Club, says much restoration is being done by newcomers.

Some of Castroville’s Alsatian traditions also are new, sparked by a sister-city relationship with Eguisheim, France, that began in 1975.

“It’s a beautiful little city in the wine country,’’ Suehs says.

During exchange visits, Yvonne Tschirhart, co-owner of Haby’s Alsatian Bakery, has compared recipes with bakers in the old country.

A dance instructor spent a month in Castroville in 1980 training dancers. The Alsatian Dancers of Texas dance troupe celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2000. French students from the Agricultural College of Rouffach designed and planted a Garden of Roots in Castroville’s Regional Park.

The latest project has community leaders really excited. A 17th century Alsatian fachwerk, a timbered-framework house common to Alsace and Germany, has been taken apart by French volunteers and shipped to Texas.

The framework was reassembled in Castroville, and the original mud walls are being replaced with D’Hanis tile, manufactured a few miles away in Medina County.

“Eventually, we’ll use it as a museum,” says Guy Holzhaus, a former city council member.

Dyanne Fry Cortez is a freelance writer in Austin, Texas.

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