was first introduced into the local market of Cologne, Germany, in 1965, by the Wicküler-Küpper Brauerei GmbH. Kölsch is one of Germany’s few traditional ale styles (next to altbier and weissbier) and still holds some 80% to 90% market share in Cologne, its city of origin. See kölsch. The Wicküler-Küpper enterprise started as a small brewpub, founded by Franz Ferdinand Joseph Wicküler, in 1845, in Wuppertal-Elberfeld, some 37 km northeast of Cologne. In 1896 Wicküler merged with another local brewery, the Küpper-Brauerei, and changed its name to Wicküler-Küpper. By 1913 Wicküler-Küpper acquired a 4,000 m2 property in Bayenthal, a suburb south of Cologne. This site was conveniently located close to a rail head and a Rhine River harbor—both great advantages for shipping Wicküler-Küpper beers to distant markets. Küppers kölsch quickly became the market leader in Cologne, much to the chagrin of its approximately two dozen indigenous, more established kölsch competitors, and, within a decade, reached an annual volume of 1 million hl. Over the course of subsequent amalgamations in the German brew industry, Wicküler-Küpper was bought and sold several times, until it became part of the Brau und Brunnen AG, Berlin/Dortmund, in 1994. Brau und Brunnen already owned several other kölsch breweries, including such brands as Gilden, Hansa, Kurfürsten, Meister, Sester, and Sion. In 2002, it combined all of its kölsch holdings into one company, the Kölner Verbund-Brauereien GmbH & Co. KG. With so much production capacity, the Küppers site in Cologne became superfluous and was sold in 2003; but the Kölner Verbund kept the Küppers brand name. Since 2004, Brau und Brunnen, and with it, the Kölner Verbund breweries, are part of the Radeberger Group, Germany’s largest brewing conglomerate. Today, all brands of the Kölner Verbund, combined, have been surpassed in output by Reissdorf, which now makes about 0.64 million hl of kölsch a year compared with the Kölner Verbund’s 0.55 million hl.
