Oktoberfest 2024 in Munich: Champagne dispute at the Wiesn – Munich

There is a dispute at the Oktoberfest. This is nothing unusual. When beer is served in large mugs, there is always going to be a row. But now there is a row because not only beer is being served. The incident was brought to the public attention by the Evening newspaper“Champagne dispute among Oktoberfest landlords”: It is a headline that only Munich could produce.

Here is an inventory, deadly serious, of course.

There are 14 large tents on the festival grounds – not including the traditional Oidn Wiesn area. And in one of the most famous, the Schottenhamel festival hall, coffee, wine, schnapps and champagne can be served in addition to beer since last year. This has upset some others.

Arabella Schörghuber, landlady of the Paulaner festival tent, is said to have submitted her resignation to the Association of Wiesn Landlords for next year if the regulations do not change.

The quarrel brings two social heavyweights face to face. The Schottenhamel tent is the oldest at the Oktoberfest. The annual Ozapft-is ritual with the mayor and the prime minister is performed there.

The tent has been in the hands of the Schottenhamels since it was first erected in 1867. It is currently run by Christian Schottenhamel, among others, who is also co-spokesperson for the Wiesn innkeepers and president of the “Filser-Buam”, who are committed to maintaining Bavarian tradition.

Arabella Schörghuber, on the other hand, also comes from a well-known Munich family. Her father Josef built large-scale residential buildings in the state capital from the 1950s onwards. The entire Arabella Park, among other things, is his work. The dispute therefore has both a social and urban political component that should not be underestimated.

He also raises a question that is often asked again and again: Who is actually allowed to do what at the world’s largest folk festival? Everything is precisely regulated, says Wiesn boss and CSU mayoral candidate Clemens Baumgärtner, trying to reassure everyone: The requirements vary depending on the category of tent.

There are three of these: brewery tents, marksmen’s tents and free tents. The six large Munich breweries own a total of seven tents. In addition to the Paulaner brewery’s festival hall, which is run by Arabella Schörghuber, there are the Hackerbräu festival hall, the Bräurosl (Hacker-Pschorr), the Löwenbräu festival tent, the Ochsenbraterei (Spatenbräu), the Augustiner festival hall and the Hofbräu festival tent. These tents are set, as are the two tents that belong to marksmen’s associations: the crossbowmen’s tent of the “Winzerer Fähndl” crossbowmen’s guild and the marksmen’s festival tent of the Bavarian Sport Shooters’ Association.

Sparkling wine sales have doubled

The other five tents, however, have to reapply every year. Despite the long tradition, the Schottenhamel festival hall is one of them. In the other free tents – Kufflers Weinzelt, Käfers Wiesn-Schänke, Fischer-Vroni and Marstall – alcoholic beverages other than beer have long been allowed to be served. Formally, the champagne decree for Schottenhamel meant that they were treated equally – but this now amounts to unequal treatment with the other beer temples, for which more stringent regulations apply. No wonder that some people are foaming at the mouth there. Wiesn topics are always treated extremely emotionally in Munich.

The 0.75-liter bottle of Dom Pérignon Vintage 2013, which is served in glass mugs at Schottenhamel, costs 390 euros. Which raises the question of how lucrative the sparkling business is? It’s not easy to convert a beer tent to champagne, Christian Schottenhamel told AZ. But what does that mean?

The statistics presented to the city council for last year show that a total of 1,240 litres of champagne were served per day (for beer, the figure was more than 4,134 litres per day). Hectoliter). Champagne consumption remained roughly at the same level as the previous year. What was noticeable, however, was that the figures for cheaper sparkling wine rose significantly from 23,412 liters in 2022 to 42,534. Possibly an indication that the Oktoberfest guests did have to watch their money a little.

However, the figures should be treated with caution. They are based on voluntary information. And the fact that these figures cannot always be trusted was shown ten years ago by a trial for tax evasion against a former Oktoberfest landlord. He had only reported every second bottle of champagne he sold to the tax office – and thus swindled away an advantage of more than 900,000 euros.

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