HENKELL VINEYARDS

	Adam Henkell 1801 - 1866 In 1832 Adam commenced his wine trade; particularly in the English speaking world (England and America) he created fame for German wines.
	Rudolf Henkell 1843 - 1912 Adam Henkell's son, Rudolf Henkell (Privy Councillor) developed the business further and enjoyed great recognition in his home town Mainz on the Rhine.
	Otto Henkell (I) 1869 - 1926 Otto, although third generation, was a pioneer entrepreneur with great vision and energy. Influenced by examples in the USA, in 1896 he created the brand HENKELL TROCKEN. He built the world's largest Cellar in Wiesbaden (1907). Even prior to World War I every second bottle of sparkling wine came from the Henkell Cellars.
	Karl Henkell 1888 - 1944 Otto's younger brother Karl and Otto's son Stefan Karl steered the family enterprise through the years of the Great Depression and Hitler Germany. Stefan Karl died in World War II and Karl died in 1944 during a bomb attack at the Cellar.
	Otto Henkell (II) 1923 - 1988 Otto, only 23 years old, resurrected the enterprise in the 1950's, 60's and 70's. The former world fame was soon regained and up to 50 million bottles left Henkellsfeld each year. In 1986 the HENKELL and SÖHNLEIN companies merged. In 1997 DEINHARD and in 2006 KUPFERBERG and SCHARLACHBERG joined the already large corporation.
Hans Henkell 1953 - Markus Henkell 1958 - From Melbourne and Wiesbaden Otto (II)'s sons, Hans and Markus, manage a German-Australian group of HENKELL companies. HENKELL VINEYARDS in the Yarra Valley is part of this group.

Article from the “Stadt-Blatt der Frankfurter Zeitung” on 4th June 1932

In times of economic downturn it is not only edifying and comforting but also useful and productive to follow the rise of business ventures which coming from most humble beginnings have gained international reputation and have given esteem and prestige to the German name due to tenacious and focused work. To this day the following illustrious example gives confidence and hope for betterment. One hundred industrious years were needed to make the previously unknown name Henkell the globally acknowledged embodiment of certain values and content. This period simultaneously represents years of prosperous development in our fatherland.

Article from the “Stadt-Blatt der Frankfurter Zeitung” on 4th June 1932

The founder of the company was Adam Henkell, born in 1800, whose father was castellan in the royal castles in Kassel. Records kept by his grandson Otto, the director of the company who died in 1929, show, that young Henkell travelled to Bordeaux and Burgundy in his twenties to work in wine stores. Upon his return to Germany in 1832 he realised his plan to set up his own business and opened in Mainz a wine store trading with “still” Rhine and Mosel wines. Great diligence, experience and frugality made his enterprise bloom and allowed him to acquire the then highly respectable house in “Walpodenstrasse 5”, across from which the champagne production facilities in “Walpodenstrasse 10” were acquired later on. The first house contained stables for 4 to 6 horses, which didn’t serve the owner’s leisure activities, but with which many travelling salesmen of the business made their trips to Germany’s North and South.

It has been reported that already in the thirties of the last century the so-called “Mousseur-Production” had been introduced in South Germany by cellarers who had returned from the Champagne. At this stage the production was mainly an imitation of the great French Champagne brand. It is only in the sixties that the German sparkling wine industry became independent and from there went from success to success. The main distribution area for those wines was England, where “Sparkling Hoch” (named after the wine location Hochheim) and “Sparkling Moselle” were in high demand.

Adam Henkell died in 1866 and left the business to his second-born son Rudolf, who became sole proprietor of the business at the age of 22. The older brother Karl Henkell, who was known to be very temperamental, went to America following a dispute with his father. In a letter dated 1862 from Pennsylvania he writes about a “strangely white water” which flows from the soil and is flammable. A discovery which would certainly bear a great future. It was the first lore of petroleum, but unfortunately Karl Henkell didn’t get the opportunity to pursue the commercial potential of his discovery: he died participating in the War of Secession in 1864.

Rudolf Henkell, who is described as downright amicable and benevolent, mainly attended to the English market, once he had taken over the business. Twice a year he spent three to four weeks in England, the trip taking two full days including one night spent in Brussels. This in spite of the sleeper train which already in those days left Vienna for Ostende around midnight and arrived in London the following day at five in the afternoon. The orders from England, which consisted of up to 600 quarter pieces (Viertelstück) wine and 1,200 dozen boxes of “Sparkling Hock” and Moselle, made, according to Otto Henkell, a considerable percentage of the business’ turnover and helped despite low prices to keep the company going. In the early eighties Rudolf Henkell nevertheless struggled with considerable business difficulties and the concern for his future prompted him to follow the suggestion of his New York representative and go to America for three months. He first travelled to America in 1885 and went twice more over the ocean at a later stage. Every trip was a great success. His kind manners allowed him to deal subtly with the somewhat peculiar German-American wine merchants of those times. Those wine merchants were mostly uneducated Palatine farmers, who had were running some sort of wine counter and used up a lot of wine.

Rudolf Henkell’s wine business in America was such a success that in 1890 he had managed to grind out the losses of his business in Germany.

Article from the “Stadt-Blatt der Frankfurter Zeitung” on 4th June 1932

A majority of Rudolf Henkell’s business depended on the sales abroad. It was therefore of utmost importance to him that his son Otto gained some experience overseas and learned some foreign languages. The young man, according to his own testimony, was thus given an excellent upbringing and education in this regard.  After Otto had served his year with the ‘13er Husaren’ in Frankfurt, he went to London for two years, where he familiarised himself with the wine trade and the sales organisation. Even though the company’s trade with sparkling wine was still in its very first beginnings, Otto Henkell already dreamt of a similar expansion in the trade of wine. However he turned away from this idea once he realised the much greater opportunities that lay in the creation of a sparkling wine brand in demand. It was then, as he recalls, that he decided that the company should mainly concentrate on the sparkling wine trade. But he realised that to this end the name “Henkell” had to be made known first. After nine busy months in America Otto Henkell came home in May 1891, got married and was made a partner in the company by his father. According to the records the sparkling wine production yielded between 50,000 – 60,000 bottles at the time. Two thirds of the production went to America and England and between 10,000-15,000 bottles were sold in Germany often with the buyers label on them. This kind of business was not only laborious but also not profitable, because the company had to match the prices of its cheapest competition.

When Otto Henkell returned from a second trip to America, he began to implement the idea of a newspaper advertisement. And in the spring of the year 1894 the first advertisements appeared in the favoured advertisement section of Germany’s first newspaper. It read that fanciers preferred moderate sparkling wines, which especially accentuated the finesse of the related ‘Urweine’. It was at the time that the appellation ‘Henkell Sekt trocken’ was registered. For the introduction of the brand name through the newspaper the company had to pay the sum of 3,000 Mark per year as recounts Mr Henkell. But only a few days after the first insertions the first order for 12 bottles of Henkell Sekt trocken came from Traben-Trarbach. It was on the same day that the company received an order from America for several thousand cases of wine. Otto Henkell remembers that the order for the twelve bottles of sparkling wine, which justified his advertisement campaign, pleased him much more than the large American order.

From now on the business grew rapidly. In 1896 20,000 bottles were filled, a number which soon increased to 500’000. Rudolf Henkell smiled when his son declared for the first time that half a million bottles were needed and he was apparently amused by his son’s ‘delusions of grandeur’. Nevertheless, the idea was executed and due to increasing sales the production became enormous. Finally three to four million bottles were produced per year under the most difficult circumstances using 50 different wine producers in Mainz. Simultaneously the company created a new way of large newspaper advertisement so far unheard of in Germany: the first such advertisement illustrated the fact, that Henkell had had to import hundred train carriages of wine from the Champagne to fill its Cuvees in 1902. The illustration showed a long train winding its way from Reims to Mainz.

Due to the competence of its owners, and also due to the economic up-swing in Germany, the Henkell’s had succeeded in turning a small wine trading business situated in the Walpodenstrasse in Mainz into one of the most prestigious sparkling wine businesses not only in Germany but also in the world.

Accordingly the company has in the mean time (1908/09) relocated to a much larger production site in Biebrich-Wiesbaden. When Otto Henkell passed away in 1929, the company was facing bleak times. Through the war the company lost its extensive possessions and cellars in the Champagne and the following years had seen the turnover decrease gradually.

Additionally the prohibition meant that America had fallen away as a consumer. Today as 100 years ago the company is still a general partnership. The owners are Mrs Otto Henkell, daughter of Stefan Karl Michel, Geh. Kommerzienrat and longstanding president of the Mainz chamber of commerce, Karl Henkell, Otto Henkell’s younger brother, as well as his son, Stefan Karl Henkell. The spirit which dominates the business however, the spirit of the fathers, combined with the best optimism guarantees that hard times will be overcome and in better times a new rise will begin.

End of newspaper article of 1932

Article from the “Stadt-Blatt der Frankfurter Zeitung” on 4th June 1932

The history continued from the 21st century perspective:

Karl and Alice Henkell had two sons, Otto (born 1923) and Hans (born 1924).  both served in the 2nd  world war (picture 1). Hans lost his life in 1945 as a fighter pilot and their father Karl Henkell was killed during a bombing raid onto the cellars in 1944. Whilst Otto Henkell jun.(II) (then 21) was still in Russia as a soldier, his mother Alice Henkell (picture 1a) managed the business only to die of cancer in 1946.

The only remaining family member was Otto Henkell who at the young age of 23 years became the head of the Henkell business in Wiesbaden. He married Ursula in 1950 and had 4 children, Hans (born 1953), Emanuel (born 1954), Markus und Mirjam (both born 1958). Although he made the business immensely successful in post war Germany (peaking in selling 45 million bottles of sparkling wine per annum) disagreement with his silent partners (the descendants of his uncle Otto Henkell I) made him sell the business in 1986 to the other family who successfully runs it as Henkell & Söhnlein KG to this day.

It was always Otto Henkell great joy to support his son Hans when entering the Australian Wine Industry in 1980. Otto Henkell (II) died in 1988. His first Australian grandson Otto (born 1983) was named after him whilst his second Australian grandson Karl (born 1986) was named after Otto’s father Karl (1988-1944).