What do you think of this fact?
When people think of reunification, they usually picture West German companies taking over businesses in the East. With sparkling wine, it went the other way round. In 2002, Rotkäppchen from Freyburg in eastern Germany took over the West German brands “Mumm”, “Jules Mumm” and “MM Extra”.
A name born from a lost lawsuit
The winery is much older than East Germany. According to the German Patent and Trade Mark Office, Moritz and Julius Kloss founded a wine shop in Freyburg with Carl Foerster in 1856, and from 1858 they made sparkling wine. At first they sold it under French-sounding names like “Monopol”.
Then they lost a lawsuit against the champagne house Walbaum-Heidsieck. They needed a new name. The company simply took the red capsule on its bottles and turned it into “Rotkäppchen”, German for Little Red Riding Hood and literally “little red cap”, a nod to the rival’s brand “Red Top”. The name was registered on February 20, 1895, and the trademark is still valid today.
First the crash, then the rise
In East Germany, the winery was a state-owned company and did well: in 1987, according to the patent office, it sold 15 million bottles. After 1989, sales collapsed.
But the recovery beat all expectations, according to the patent office: by 1992 it was back to 5.7 million bottles, and in 1993 the company was privatized. From 2001, Rotkäppchen was the best-selling sparkling wine first in eastern Germany and then in the whole country.
Here’s the twist: according to a 2001 report in the Tagesspiegel, the brand had more than 50 percent market share in the East but only 2.3 percent in the West. The solution was to buy well-known western brands. Until then, Mumm and MM belonged to Seagram Deutschland.
After taking over Mumm, Rotkäppchen was Germany’s biggest sparkling wine producer, according to the patent office, and later added brands like Geldermann and Eckes.
The little bottle with the red cap didn’t just survive, it collected its competitors.