Petra Mayer (Wine Queen)

Petra Mayer (born April 4, 1966 in Schliengen ) is a German wine and PR specialist and former German wine queen .

Petra Mayer comes from a small family winery in southern Markgräflerland . She was initially the local wine princess in Schliengen and in 1987/1988 Baden wine queen . In October 1988 she was elected 40th German Wine Queen in Berlin and held this position in 1988/1989.

With her term of office, the image of the German Wine Queen began to change in public. She was the first to take off the traditional costume or dirndl, which had been mandatory until then , and also put on jeans at official appointments. For the first time there were official press photos of a wine queen without a crown and she dared something that no other “wine majesty” had done before her: She spoke out on wine-growing issues such as the glycol scandal or volume regulation.

education

Petra Mayer initially completed an apprenticeship as a winemaker at the Julius Zotz winery in Heitersheim and at the State Viticulture Institute in Freiburg from 1983 to 1985 . She then passed the technical diploma in Geisenheim and studied from 1986 to 1992 at the Wiesbaden University of Applied Sciences / Research Institute Geisenheim , where she graduated as Dipl.-Ing. for viticulture , cellar management and marketing (FH). In 1991 she completed a professional internship in Stellenbosch, South Africa, as Assistant Wine Maker at the Stellenbosch Farmers Winery. In her diploma thesis she dealt with the "Opportunities for optimizing wine tourism as part of a communication strategy using the example of the organization Wines of South Africa."

Professional background

She began her professional career in 1991/1992 as a PR assistant at the marketing agency “das Team” in Mainz . There she was responsible for the nationwide PR support for the Rhineland-Palatinate wine festivals. In 1992/1993 she worked for the export department of the Trier cork industry. From 1993 to 1995 she was a senior consultant at the PR agency PR & P in Wiesbaden and was responsible for project management for the PR work “Austrian Wine”.

In November 1995 she founded her own PR agency "pm-kommunikation" in Baden-Baden. Her international customers include a. Wines of South Africa, Georgian Winefamily in Georgia , Fetzer Vineyards and Bonterra in California and Alois Lageder and San Patrignano in Italy.

In the twelve years in which she was responsible for strategic PR work for the South African wine industry in Germany, the import of wines from this country has increased more than tenfold from six million liters to over 70 million liters. South Africa has been the most successful overseas wine country on the German market since 2008 and the fourth most important wine importing country after Italy, Spain and France in terms of both volume and value.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Die Welt : [1] Wine and Knowledge , October 12, 2008

predecessor	Office	successor
Jutta Fassian	German Wine Queen 1988/1989	Renate Schäfer