🍷 Peter Mertes

Peter Mertes is a German wine company based in Bernkastel-Kues on the Mosel. According to the company, the master winemaker Peter Mertes founded a wine trade and winery in Minheim on the Mosel in 1924 with the idea of “good wine for everyone”; Wikidata also gives 1924 and names him as founder. The family business has been in the hands of the fourth generation since 2010 and is led by his great-grandson Matthias Willkomm together with Georg Graf von Walderdorff.

According to the company, it calls itself Germany’s largest wine cellar, with about 400 employees and more than one million litres filled per day in glass bottles, cartons, bag-in-box and cans. Its own brands include Maybach, Bree, Biorebe, Landlust, Rotwild and the canned brand City; it also fills private labels for retailers and has its own vacuum distillation plant for removing alcohol.

The company also says it produces wine and sparkling wine under the label of the Munich delicatessen Feinkost Käfer and supplies private-label products to grocery retailers in Germany and abroad. It has offered contract filling since 2009, has a dedicated area for ready-to-drink wine and spirits cocktails, and bases its quality management on three pillars: oenology, laboratory and cellar management. It describes itself as a leader in organic wine, Demeter and Fair Trade, without giving certification numbers, and is a member of Wine in Moderation. A chronicle of the years 1924 to 2024 is available on its website as a PDF.

Under EU law, as amended in 2021, wine may be sold as “dealcoholised” when its actual alcoholic strength is no more than 0.5% vol, and as “partially dealcoholised” when it is above 0.5% vol but below the minimum of its category.

Why it matters to you. A brand name says who bottled the wine; whether the grapes come from a protected origin such as the Mosel is shown only by the origin on the label. The WHO reminds: there is no safe level of alcohol.