Anheuser & Fehrs

Anheuser & Fehrs – The bold sound of the Nahe that conquered the world

Where the River Nahe winds its way through the steep slate slopes and volcanic soils of Bad Kreuznach, where viticulture has been in the hands of the same families for centuries, a wine export company was founded in 1869 that was to change the reputation of an entire wine-growing region forever . Anheuser & Fehrs – a name that evokes a sense of new beginnings , of a connection between the old homeland and the New World that is unrivalled.

August Anheuser, born in Bad Kreuznach in 1845, was brought up by his grandparents and later took over their vineyard, one of the largest in the Nahe region. His entrepreneurial spirit was shaped by a commercial apprenticeship in the USA with the Eberhard Anheuser family – the founders of the legendary Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis. Armed with this American vision, he returned and founded the company ‘Anheuser und Fehrs’ together with Adolf Fehrs. Their aim was bold: to export the Nahe’s wines of outstanding quality beyond the region’s borders to the rest of the world. And they were successful. It was through their wines that the Nahe region first came to the attention of a wider public – a step regarded as the seed from which the independent Nahe wine-growing region sprang.

The winery, which was soon run as a ‘state-owned winery’, developed into a veritable treasure trove of the finest wines. Once-in-a-century wines such as the legendary ‘Kennedy Wine’ , an Assmannshäuser Höllenberg Pinot Noir Rot-Weiss Edelbeerenauslese from 1917, or the legendary rarities from the Rauenthaler Gehrn and the Marcobrunner, bear witness to the unrivalled quality that has been preserved here over generations. Following Fehrs’ death in 1902, August Anheuser became the sole owner, and the estate was guided into the modern era by his son Egon Anheuser, a dedicated Ökonomierat and later recipient of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany .

Today, the former Anheuser-Fehrs winery in Bad Kreuznach is no longer active as such, but its spirit lives on in the Paul Anheuser winery, which is still run today by the brothers Rudolf and Paul, representing the 14th generation. Anheuser & Fehrs was more than just a winery – it was the bold voice of the Nahe that conquered the world and left a legacy that lives on to this day in the region’s finest wines.