In the well-known Eltville sparkling wine manufacturer Schloss Vaux, there are changes in the group of shareholders as well as at the top of the company.

In the future, the families Prince Michael zu Salm-Salm and Georg Graf zu Castell-Castell will become anchor shareholders in the company, which currently has around 70 owners.

Nikolaus Graf von Plettenberg, who has headed the company for 23 years, will, as planned for a long time, retire at the end of the year.

He will be succeeded by Christoph Graf, who has been with the company for several years as sales manager and member of the management board.

Gerald Braunberger

Editor.

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Vaux Castle has an eventful history.

The company was founded in 1868 by members of the Graeger wine trading family in Berlin.

Probably after the Franco-German War of 1870/71, they acquired Vaux Castle, located near Metz on the Moselle, from a French marquis.

400,000 bottles a year

This is where the French name comes from, which was retained when the family had to sell their property, which was now back in France, after the First World War. With the proceeds, the family founded a sparkling wine cellar in Germany, which eventually settled in Eltville in the Rheingau. The sparkling wine cellar experienced several changes of ownership; after all, it belonged to a subsidiary of Dresdner Bank. In 1987, the company was converted into a stock corporation, in which around 70 people participated, including well-known names from the German economy.

In principle, nothing has changed in this construction to this day, although at the turn of the millennium there had been temporary tensions among the owners as the business situation deteriorated. Michael Prinz zu Salm-Salm has chaired the Supervisory Board of Schloss Vaux since 2001; so far, however, he has not held any shares. He was president of the Association of German Prädikatsweingüter (VDP) for many years and comes from a family that has been growing wine on the Nahe for a good 800 years.

Georg Graf zu Castell-Castell is a lawyer and entrepreneur. He belongs to a family that has managed the Fürstlich Castell'sches Domainamt winery in Franconia for many generations. The changes that have now been announced in the circle of owners of Schloss Vaux will ensure that neither large corporations nor financial investors have any influence on the sparkling wine cellar.

The company is sparing with information on the business situation;

A few years ago sales were more than 400,000 bottles a year.

Under the direction of Nikolaus Graf von Plettenberg, the company was fundamentally modernized and converted to traditional bottle fermentation in order to firmly anchor Schloss Vaux in the market for high-priced sparkling wines.

Schloss Vaux has successfully positioned itself in the deluxe segment, according to a recent press release.

A few years ago, the company also acquired seven hectares of vineyards in the Rheingau.