Christmas Market
The new German mulled wine queen loves red
The new German mulled wine queen, Louisa Kress, is always out and about between the stalls on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. photo
© Harald Tittel/dpa
After three years of forced Corona break, there is a German mulled wine queen again. She already knows her way around wine and crowns.
The new German mulled wine queen Louisa Kress likes it classic red. “I prefer to drink a Dornfelder, with cinnamon and cloves and lots of fruity oranges,” says the 30-year-old from Trier. That’s why she also wears a wine-red dirndl in her royal office. “It fits well,” she explains, laughing and adjusting her silver tiara on her head. In the next few weeks she will be on the Trierer At the Christmas market, the cup is especially popular for winemakers’ mulled wine. “I also drink the white one, but everything in moderation.”
The math and religion teacher is already familiar with wine and crowns. Until last summer she had been Trier’s wine queen and had rather cool grape juice in her glass. “I’m now looking forward to the new position, it excites me.” There is now a wide variety of winemakers’ mulled wines – the be-all and end-all is a good base wine, says Kress, whose grandparents used to be winemakers on the Upper Moselle.
“I spent a lot of time in the vineyard as a child,” she says. More for eating grapes than for helping. “But the love of wine began at the winery.” Now she is looking forward to the time before Christmas. “These lights everywhere, it glitters so beautifully.”
After her official start on November 28th, Kress is always out and about between the stands on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. “But I would also be very willing to represent mulled wine and my city elsewhere,” she says. The position of German mulled wine queen has existed since 2008. In the past three years there has been no dignitary due to Corona, Kress is number eight.
“Winzermulled wines are becoming increasingly popular,” says the spokesman for the German Wine Institute (DWI), Ernst Büscher, in Bodenheim near Mainz. The alcoholic hot drink is now an integral part of the wine range for many winemakers. There are now almost 250 wineries nationwide that offer mulled wine.
For a long time, mulled wine “didn’t have the best image”: “Especially when it comes to the day after,” he says. But that changed with high-quality mulled wine from the winemaker. Many wineries also see this as an opportunity to offer their customers something “with a personal touch” based on their own house recipe.
In Trier, the mulled wine queen is following the trend: For the first time this season, a rosé will also be served as a hot drink, said the organizer of the Trier Christmas market, Angela Bruch. The market starts this Friday (November 24th).