Wine barrels (Weingut Ingelfingen)

For centuries wine travelled in oak barrels. In the Bordeaux region the barrique of 225 litres is the classic size: one person can roll it when full, and it holds exactly 300 bottles of 0.75 litres. The size is not a binding standard.

When the railways arrived, wine moved by rail too. Around 1854 the wagon-foudre appeared, a large cask built onto a rail chassis. Paris-Bercy, once called the largest wine market in the world, received its wine increasingly by rail. According to Wikipedia, about 20,000 wagons-foudres were in service there in 1910.

Ingelfingen lies in the Kocher valley in Hohenlohe, Baden-Württemberg. It was first documented in 1080. Wine grows on the Muschelkalk (shell limestone) hillside between Ingelfingen and Criesbach, where the Ingelfinger Fass, a wine museum in the shape of a giant oval barrel, was built in 2001/2002. The Kocher valley railway reached Künzelsau in 1892 and Forchtenberg in 1924, and ran through Ingelfingen. Freight traffic ended on 15 May 1991.

Our wine barrels are a stylised design. A barrel measures about 1.25 m by 0.9 m at 1:87 and is not modelled on a specific historic barrel. Fifteen of them lie in two layers on a wooden carrier, lashed with five tie-down straps. The small signs against the barrel heads read “Weingut Ingelfingen” and refer to the town.

Sources: Wikipedia: Wine warehouses of Bercy · Wine Terroirs: Barrels on wheels · Wein-Plus Glossar: Barrique bordelaise · Wikipedia: Ingelfingen · Wikivoyage: Ingelfingen · Ich geh wandern: Vom Ingelfinger Fass zur Ruine Lichteneck · Bahnstrecke Waldenburg–Forchtenberg (Kochertalbahn)