Sweden barrel
The so-called Schwedenfass is a wine barrel in the State Court Cellar Würzburg , which is located below the Würzburg Residence .
The construction of the Sweden barrel was commissioned by the Würzburg Prince-Bishop Konrad von Wernau around 1684 in order to store the so-called millennium, the remains of a valuable Riesling wine from the Würzburger Stein vineyard , which was almost 150 years old at the time . For a few decades, the priceless vintage from the exceptionally dry year 1540 was considered lost, as it was lost in 1631 during the Thirty Years' War when the Swedish troops approached and before the fortress of Marienberg was stormed under King Gustav Adolfhastily buried. In the turmoil of the war, knowledge of the burial site was lost until the remaining bottles were discovered in the Gramschatzer Forest near Würzburg in 1684. The prince-bishop had the new Swedish barrel filled with it, and over the years the stock gradually decreased through tastings.
Today the barrel no longer contains any wine. The Bavarian King Ludwig II again had the Riesling wine bottled and auctioned in order to finance the construction of his fairy tale castles. Today only a handful of individual bottles are known, including one of them is on loan from the Bürgerspital winery in Würzburg.
When tasting another bottle in 1966, it was found that the 426 year old wine was still drinkable and had a certain character. The original, extraordinarily sweet taste could no longer be expected after the centuries.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ History of the Swedish barrel ( Memento of the original from November 11, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved September 15, 2010.
Coordinates: 49 ° 47 ′ 35.6 " N , 9 ° 56 ′ 18.4" E