The world’s largest wine barrel holds 219,000 litres, and has a dance floor on top

Wine barrels are no longer made as before. The world’s largest is 271 years old, and has not been surpassed.

The heidelberg castle, in GermanyToday it is almost in ruins. Its first construction dates back to the 13th century, and since then it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times, the victim of several lightning strikes that caused successive fires.

This castle is famous throughout the world for its obsession with making the largest barrels in the world.

The first was called Barril de Johann Kasimir, and was built in 1591. It had a capacity of 130,000 litres, but was destroyed during the 30 Years War. There was a second and third barrel, which have also been lost, down to the Karl-Theodor barrel, also called heidelberg barrel, built in 1751. Here you can see it, in a photo from 1900:

The world’s largest wine barrel had an initial capacity, when it was built, of 221,726 liters. But over the centuries the wood has dried out, and now solo they fit 219,000 litres. It measures 7 meters wide, by 8.5 meters long.

For its construction were used 130 mature oaks. Interestingly, it was only filled with wine for the first few years. At least for a century remains empty, already converted into a tourist attraction.

As we see in the photos, a huge staircase allows you to climb to the top, where it has been built a dance floor.

Why did Heidelberg Castle build such huge barrels? The reason was that they were used to collect tithes from wine growers.

They were obliged to deliver to the lord of the castle 10% of your wine harvest, which they poured into the huge barrel.

It was low quality wine, used for meals in the castle, and even for servants and soldiers.

It is known that the first barrel, which had a capacity of 130,000 liters, was emptied in a period of between 60 and 100 days. If we take an average value of 80 days, this means that the castle consumed… 1,625 liters of wine per day!

The second barrel, with 195,000 liters, ran out in 4 or 5 months.

The heidelberg barrel It has also become a myth of literature, because it appears quoted in some of the most famous books in history.

For example in Moby Dick, in Five Weeks in a Balloon of Jules Verne, in The Miserables of Victor Hugo, in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, o en A wanderer abroad, by Mark Twain.

This is how the author described it. Tom Sawyer’s adventures:

“Everyone has heard of the great Heidelberg Cask, and most have undoubtedly seen it. It is a wine barrel as big as a country house, and some traditions say it holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds one billion eight hundred million barrels.“.

“I think it is likely that one of these statements is a mistake and the other is a lie. However, the mere question of capacity is of no importance, since the barrel is empty, and in fact has always been empty, according to the story. An empty barrel the size of a cathedral could not elicit more than scant emotion in me.í “.

It almost never fulfilled the purpose for which it was built, but the Heidelberg Barrel has become a tourist attraction that visit 500,000 people a year.