Joh. Eggers Sohn & Co

Joh. Eggers Sohn & Co. was a historic wine and spirits merchant based in Bremen. The company traces its origins to a wine business established in 1773. Johan Eggers, born in Hamburg-Barmbek, came to Bremen and worked in the wine trade before marrying the widow of the shop’s founder in 1776. The business subsequently took the Eggers name and developed over the following century into one of Germany’s important wine importers.

During the nineteenth century, Joh. Eggers Sohn expanded its trade in spirits as well as wine. The Second World War destroyed the company’s wine stores in Bremen harbour, and rebuilding began in 1949. Offices and warehouses were consolidated at Getreidestraße 16 in 1957–1958, and in 1959 the company began producing spirits itself. In 1963 this production was transferred for tax reasons to Regis-Spirituosen GmbH & Co. KG in Berlin, while the Bremen business increasingly concentrated on quality wines and branded spirits.

A European Court of Justice case concerning Joh. Eggers Sohn provides a useful later snapshot of its production structure. In 1976 the company imported French wine distillate, matured it for six months in oak casks at its own premises and processed it into wine spirit; the court record explicitly states that Joh. Eggers Sohn no longer had a distillery of its own at that time.

The historic business entered insolvency in 2003 according to the present company history and Bremen’s economic development authority. Eggers & Franke subsequently acquired the Joh. Eggers Sohn name and trademark rights, and the name was relaunched in 2005 for a specialist wine and spirits business. Since 2018 the wider Eggers & Franke group has belonged to Rotkäppchen-Mumm.