The South Tyrolean Wine Museum in Kaltern forms part of the South Tyrolean regional museums. The Museum, like the South Tyrolean Museum of Hunting and Fishing in Wolfsthurn Castle, is incorporated into the South Tyrolean Folklore Museum.

History & concept

The mechanisation of agriculture, particularly in winegrowing, made rapid progress in the period after 1945, with old implements being replaced. The technique of cellaring wine saw especially great changes. A group of determined collectors around the subsequent curators Luis Oberrauch and the president for many years, Walter Amonn, attempted to preserve evidence of the historic winegrowing activity and establish a museum.

On 18 September 1955 the Wine Museum was founded.  It can thus look back on a 65-year history and was the first museum to be created in South Tyrol after the war.

On 30 June 1983 the association was dissolved. Previously run as a private structure, the museum was on 1 July of that year incorporated as a branch into the South Tyrolean Folklore Museum. The museum for the time remained at Ringberg Castle, with long-serving curator Luis Oberrauch, famous for his guided tours, remaining in office.

The next major break came with the transfer of the museum to the centre of Kaltern. At Easter 1988 the Wine Museum opened in its new premises in the former Di Pauli cellar, which had previously been the courthouse of the Lords of Kaltern-Laimburg, and on 3 September the new exhibition opened in its “new, object-oriented form”, as the then-director Dr. Hans Griessmair wrote.