The Giant Wine Barrel
Discover the historic heart of the Halberstadt Hunting Lodge.
THE BARREL THAT’S ALMOST
A WORLD CHAMPION
The historic giant wine barrel in the cellar of the Spiegelsberge Hunting Lodge is a curious attraction in Halberstadt. It was built in 1594 on the orders of Duke Heinrich Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg, Halberstadt’s first Protestant bishop.
With its extraordinary capacity of 144,000 liters, it is considered one of the largest historic wine barrels in Germany. It is about 9 meters long and has a diameter of just under 6 meters. Its capacity is roughly equivalent to 655 bathtubs of wine.
The imposing wooden barrel originally stood in Gröningen Castle. In the late 18th century, Baron von Spiegel had it moved to the cellar of his hunting lodge in the Spiegelsbergen, where it can still be viewed today.
CRAFTSMANSHIP ON A GIANT SCALE.
It is a striking testament to medieval craftsmanship. It was built for Gröningen Castle by the cooper Michael Werner from Landau, who three years earlier had also crafted the Heidelberg barrel, which no longer survives today. During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, these giant barrels served primarily as objects of splendor and prestige.
The Gröningen or Halberstadt giant wine barrel was listed in the famous Guinness Book of World Records in 2008 as the world’s oldest giant wine barrel. However, the entry was corrected in 2019. It turned out that the giant wine barrel in Tübingen had already been built in 1549. It is not quite as huge, though, as it holds “only” about 85,000 liters.
