BIG
WINE BARREL ENVY
Giant Wine Barrel Restaurant of Bad Dürkheim
As
wine-making took hold in the valleys from the Hardt Mountains to the
Rhine River in the 1700s, a sort of competition seemed to build among
the regions which passed among the hands of ruling families. The dukes
of Wurttemburg demanded payment of taxes from their lands, some of
it in the form of wine. The first giant wine barrel to hold this fruitful
bounty was built in the undercroft of Ludwigsburg Palace north of Stuttgart
(see Ludwigsburg
Palace). The nobles and people of neighboring Rhineland
(later annexed into Wurttemburg) felt they needed to have as impressive
a winebarrel as their rivals and built a bigger wine barrel, the famous
giant wine barrel of Heidelberg (see Heidelberg
Castle), farther to the north along the Rhine another
big barrel can be found in Oberweisel (see Rhine
Castle Hotel Schonburg) though a mere tub to Heidelberg’s.
It wasn’t until the 1930s that a wine grower and barrel maker
(cooper) in the Rhineland-Palatine got the idea of beating out both
Ludwigsburg and Heidelberg in the wine barrel war.
Durkheimer Fass Restaurant – Bad Durkheim
The
Durkheimer Sausage Fair (really a wine festival) had been held in Bad
Durkheim for a couple hundred years when Fritz Keller built his barrel
as a monument to the Palatine wine tradition (see German
Wine Road). Keller traveled to the Black Forest to fell
almost 200 pine trees for his imagined massive barrel. 178 barrel staves,
each 15 meters long form the great barrel, 13.5 meters in diameter.
The wine barrel of Bad Durkheim would have a capacity of 1.7 million
liters of wine, by far supassing Heidelberg's 220,000 liters. A substantial
barrel of vino indeed, exept for one detail – the giant barrel
in Bad Durkheim has never been filled with wine. Not a drop. It is
unclear whether the barrel was made well enough to hold wine, or was
never really intended to.
Today,
the wine in the Giant Wine Barrel of Bad Durkheim is poured into glasses
at the wine bar of the family restaurant which takes up the inside
of the barrel – the Dürkeimer Fass. The wine barrel restaurant
of the Dürkheimer Fass was opened inside the barrel in 1956. Inside
can hand made wine barrel bottoms of oakwood on the walls follow the
history of German wine.
Finding the Durkheimer Giant Wine Barrel
The Durkheimer Fass wine barrel is easily spotted,
located just off the main road through Bad Durkheim next to the massive
parking lot where the Dürkheimer Wurstmarkt Festival is held (see Wine
Festivals) can seat 120 in the rich wood interior
which has been expanded beyond the
barrel
itself, with outdoor terrace seating for another two hundred and has
become the iconic symbol of Bad Durkheim and its annual festival. © Bargain
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Dürkheimer
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See Also:
MERCEDES
BENZ MUSEUM - STUTTGART
WORMS
CATHEDRAL
MAINZ
ROMANESQUE CATHEDRAL
GERMANY'S
BLACK FOREST
