Wine shop and Weinstube under one roof: some 500 to 600 wines on the shelves, plus Swabian home cooking in the adjoining tavern.
From cooper's workshop to wine merchant
It did not start with wine, it started with the barrel. In 1902 the cooper Ernst Stetter founded the business in the house on Rosenstraße, where he built wooden wine casks. The cooperage became a wine shop, and the wine shop became a fixture of the Bohnenviertel, the old bean quarter southeast of downtown.
Three generations ran it. Son Ernst junior took over in 1932 after earning his master craftsman's certificate, and grandson Roman Stetter and his wife Gertrud stood behind the counter until 2008. In January 2009 the business passed to Andreas Scherle, who also runs the hotel restaurant Zur Weinsteige.
Wine shop and wine tavern in one
The setup here is unusual and extremely practical: you can taste any wine first by the Viertele, the quarter-liter glass, roughly eight ounces, that locals in Württemberg drink by, and then carry the bottle home. The range runs from simple estate wine up to Grosses Gewächs, the German equivalent of a grand cru bottling, and reaches beyond Württemberg to international labels.
Sources disagree on how large the selection actually is, giving figures between roughly 500 and 600 wines. Either way it is far beyond what a conventional tavern keeps on hand.
The kitchen: Swabian with a Palatinate accent
What reaches the table is Swabian and Palatinate home cooking: hand-scraped Spätzle, Gaisburger Marsch, a beef stew with potatoes and Spätzle in the same bowl, and Zwiebelrostbraten, a sirloin steak buried under fried onions. These are the benchmark dishes any Weinstube is judged on.
Practical details
Sunday is the closing day. Shop and tavern keep different hours: the retail side opens Monday through Friday from 2pm, with a midday break on Saturdays, while the tavern opens Monday through Friday from 3pm and splits its Saturday. Check the official site before you make the trip.
