A32 - North Shore News - Sunday, November 13, 2011
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HOFKELLEREI (WINE CELLARS) OF THE PRINCE OF LIECHTENSTEIN
Vaduz castle offers princely wines John Masters Contributing Writer
VADUZ, Liechtenstein: Not many people own their own country anymore — the number’s especially small if you exclude those who took power by overthrowing somebody else.
WINE IN LIECHTENSTEIN The country has a climate ideally suited for the cultivation of vine with mountain slopes facing southwest, calcareous soils and an average of 1,500 hours of sunshine a year. The hot dry wind during the summer months, known as the “foehn,” aids cultivators by having a sweetening effect. — Wikipedia
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Prince Hans-Adam II doesn’t run a big place — just 160 square kilometres — but his family has had Liechtenstein since they created it in 1712 by combining two even smaller statelets they’d bought and made it one of 350 principalities in the Holy Roman Empire. It survived the merging of many of those other states, first by Napoleon in 1806, then by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which reduced them to the 39-member German Confederation. When the confederation collapsed in 1866, the prince’s forbears deftly managed to keep their postage-stamp-sized land from absorption by either of its neighbours, Switzerland to the west, Austria to the east. Early on Liechtenstein, bordered by the Rhine River, but mostly mountainous cow pasture, was dirt poor — so poor that its ruling family, which had better properties elsewhere, didn’t bother setting foot in it until 1818. Vaduz Castle didn’t become the family’s principal residence until 1938. These days, though, its 35,000 citizens enjoy one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, thanks mainly to the principality’s status as an international banking centre — or, some would say, a tax haven. More than 70,000 companies are incorporated in Liechtenstein. Hans-Adam owns one of the nation’s 15 banks, LGT, and is said to personally be worth well over a billion euros, making him one of Europe’s wealthiest rulers. You can’t tour his castle, but you can visit his winery, See Prince page 33
photo John Masters/Meridian Writers’ Group
THE 4 1/2-hectare Vaduz vineyard, adjacent to the Red House, produces the pinot noir and chardonnay grapes for the Hofkellerei des Fürsten von Liechtenstein, the winery owned by Liechtenstein’s ruling prince.
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