D The Rosenborg Wine

The Rosenborg wine is served at the Queen’s New Year banquet and for special occasions in the royal household. At the present rate of annual consumption there is sufficient wine for at least another 300 years.
According to tradition the wine originally came from the German Rhine area, from Bacharach. The wine was formerly kept in wooden barrels, the three oldest of which, from 1598, 1599 and 1615, once belonged to Christian IV’s mother, Dowager Queen Sophie, and were kept in Nykøbing Castle. In 1659 these barrels were taken as war booty by the Swedes, but after they had been loaded onto ships for transport to Stockholm the wine was re-conquered by a Danish privateering ship.

The barrels were then taken to Copenhagen Castle, from where the contents of the castle’s wine cellar were transferred to Rosenborg in 1731. During several hundred years the Rhine wine in these and the other barrels was carefully topped up with other sugar-free wine so that the new wine came to have the character of the old. By 1982, however, the old wooden barrels had deteriorated to the point where it was necessary to transfer the wine to steel tanks and bottles.

Next room ->