Wine cooperative

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A winegrowers' cooperative is the association of winegrowers from a town or region in the legal form of a cooperative who press the grapes from their own vineyards centrally in order to be able to produce and market wine from them under a common name . Synonyms are used in various wine regions, such as the Württemberg winegrowers' cooperative and the South Tyrolean winery cooperative .

The winemaking cooperation offers various advantages. A larger common vineyard area means improved selection of special grape qualities. Relevant trained specialists such as oenologists and marketing specialists can be employed for important areas such as wine-growing in the cellar and wine distribution . The shared use of personnel, equipment, machines and buildings for wine-growing and sales optimizes production and sales costs. Strict joint quality and production rules ensure high-quality grape production. The members not only have to comply with the generally applicable minimum requirements under wine law, but also regulate the cooperative wine production via their own, stricter quality rules that usually go far beyond this. Internal competition between the individual winemakers can lead to a steady increase in quality.

One disadvantage is that wine lovers often miss the direct relationship with the winemaker, as the wines produced in this way are marketed through a cooperation. In addition, due to the structural lack of internal competition ( common land jam ), the quality of the wine produced can steadily decrease.

The association in a winegrowers' cooperative can lead to an improvement as well as a deterioration in the quality of the wine. Which direction a wine cooperative takes depends to a large extent on the skill of its professional staff.

In 2015 there were 179 wine cooperatives in the 13 German wine-growing regions. Its members cultivate around 32,002 hectares (around 30% of the total area under vines in Germany) and produce around 3 million hectoliters of wine. In 2019 there were still 150 cooperatives, which together generated sales of around EUR 800 million

history

The oldest winegrowers 'cooperatives include the Neckarsulm-Gundelsheim winegrowers' cooperative founded in 1855 (merged into the Heilbronn-Erlenbach-Weinsberg cooperative winery in 2007 ) and the Mayschoss-Altenahr winegrowers 'cooperative, founded in 1868 as Mayschoss's winegrowers' association and converted into a cooperative in 1869 . Germany's largest wine cooperative is Moselland eG in Bernkastel-Kues .

Theodor Heuss 'doctorate from 1905 on viticulture and the vintner status in Heilbronn am Neckar gave the impetus to an intensive scientific study of the winegrowers' cooperatives and to further foundings.

In South Tyrol, the cooperative idea led to the establishment of the first cellar cooperative in Andrian in 1893 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Winegrowers' cooperative  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Wine cooperative  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Overview: German wine cooperatives ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2006 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. , accessed on September 23, 2015 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutsche-winzergenossenschaften.de
  2. [1] Figures and facts on meininger.de, accessed on June 19, 2020
  3. [2] Figures and facts on raiffeisen.de, accessed on June 19, 2020