Frau Blücher, Wursts, Whisky and Real Glass. The Surprises at The Kopenicker Whiskyfest in Berlin. – by CHRIS GRETA

There is a whisky festival on an island in East Berlin, as in, on the other side of the old wall. I’m willing to bet you didn’t know there was an island in East Berlin.

Kopenicker is an actual island with several bridges, on a river in the heart of what, not all that long ago, was a closed city full of secret police and spies.

Now, there are boats wandering around aimlessly, full of people drinking in the morning, pleasant streets and a mix of old and somewhat new.

A bit of Amsterdam in East Berlin.

Who knew?

I have to admit, my knowledge of East Berlin comes basically from movies.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Kleo.

“Ich bin ein Berliner!”

The last time I was in Germany, I was a vaguely unwashed student bumming around with a backpack and a forgotten return ticket. That was over forty years ago.

The wall fell, and now there are whisky festivals.

And this is quite an impressive whisky festival.

Maybe 40 tents, white, sturdy, pointy roofs, raised platforms. Almost permanent structures. I’ve lived in places utterly lacking this permanence.

Tens of thousands of bottles. Liquor stores with huge collections, you can sample for five euros each. Distilleries, showing their wares. Some food vendors. A few thousand liquor lovers, many with necklace harnesses holding Glencairn-style glasses so they can have both hands free and still carry a glass of whisky, like a talisman against demonic possession.

I came here with Jan Hinrichsen from Hinrichsen’s Farm and Distillery, located on a small island off the coast of Germany and Denmark. There are a few thousand full-time residents and a mountain of tourists in the summer.

He and his family have run this farm since the 1600s, which seems utterly impossible, but it’s true.

And he gave up dairy farming some years back and traded in his cows for a beautiful German-made copper hybrid still.

They grow their own organic barley and use their own well water to make a genuinely unique single malt whisky that can bear the unique and true name.

Frisian Whisky.

Not Scotch Whisky.

Frisian Whisky.

Got ya there didn’t I. You never heard of such a thing.

I hadn’t either till a few months back and now I’m living on the farm for a month, writing about their unique story, on this sunny morning on the banks of a river, a whiskyfest in East Berlin.

Let’s start at the hotel.

It’s a hotel. A bit brutalist in its design and execution, with occasional fine art reproductions in the lobby and continental breakfast dining room.

The art is awkward.

It has the air of someone realizing humans like color and pretty things, so they reluctantly bought all the art posters they could find at a thrift store and put them up. They ran out by the time they got to the third-floor rooms.

Honestly, it’s a fine place and actually facing onto the river, but the outdoor patio is locked away with some chairs stored upside down in an ominous “don’t even think about it, pal” kind of look.

And Frau Blücher.

Oh, Frau Blücher.

Or as I referred to her as Little Miss Sunshine. She runs the joint with an iron fist. An iron fist, not even deceivingly wrapped in a velvet glove.

When we pulled into the astoundingly tight half dozen parking places, she appeared out of nowhere to direct us how to park, waving her arms, barking in succinct German, always on the verge of violence.

Another car pulled in, and she was shouting orders. The spouse of the second car jumped out. More orders spouted. Delightful parking chaos.

And when I say Frau Blücher, I mean Cloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein. Now imagine every time I write Frau Blücher, the horses rear up, screaming that horse scream. Now, Igor stops by the door, says, “Blücher,” and the horses scream, and he smiles his buggy-eyed smile before bolting into the castle.

(OK, take a minute and go watch that clip in case you forgot how brilliant Young Frankenstein was. I looked up Frau Blücher and one website said it’s the German word for glue, which is funny as hell, but it may not be the case.)

In my movie-fueled imagination, she’s wearing an East German prison guard uniform and barking orders at everyone. “You will take one spoonful of porridge and place the spoon back on the table in the spoonplace and chew seven times and swallow and then pick up the spoon from the spoonplace for your next spoonful and return it to the spoonplace…”

I imagined her walking briskly past a funeral and taking over, telling mourners to stop their whining and making sure they are in straight lines.

When I checked in, I tried a few feeble attempts at being the big, dumb, friendly American. My “I don’t spechen your lingo” jokes fell flat.

I asked about the wifi and she handed me a handwritten piece of paper.

THE handwritten piece of paper.

And I assume it’d been handed down from her great-grandmother.

I asked if I could take it because, of course, the wifi code was a random series of at least a dozen numbers and she said “NO!” and made clicky photo motions with her fingers.

I took a picture on my phone and gave her back the precious paper.

She warned my German-speaking companions that the elevator didn’t work well. As in, it might lock you in for the rest of your life.

Screw that. I was on the third floor, had a heavy bag, and had just driven five hours. Bring on the iffy elevator. She kept warning of a trapped death but screw it. Damn the torpedoes.

I took the elevator, feeling the heat of her evil gaze.

I lived. I think the elevator is fine. She just wanted to watch us carry our stuff up three flights of stairs.

The next morning, I got up early to write and went to the dining room, where there were guests having their continental breakfast, and she saw me walking in with a laptop and leapt in my way, pointing at my laptop and wagging her evil finger…

“NO ELECTRIC!’

Huh? I was taken aback, disappointed that it was too early to have a snarky response ready. I just turned around and sat conspicuously in the lobby, plopped into a couch, and wrote, hoping my presence would unnerve her because I wasn’t chained to anything.

Good thing I had a Whiskyfest to escape to.

And it was a fascinating Whiskyfest.

It was packed, maybe 50 booths, some from a single brand, some retail outlets, some collectors that do the show circuit bringing hundreds of old bottles, all numbered with a price per shot.

Some observations with bullet points because I love bullet points:

• The place was packed

• It was in a wonderful location, outdoors, nice sunny days, on a river

• Everyone got a Glencairn-style tasting glass to try whiskies

• Most had a neck lanyard thingy that would hold said glass

• It was 20 Euro to get in and 5 Euro for most tastings, which I’d guess were an ounce.

• You could get beers and mixed drinks in real glasses like in a pub.  Big, beautiful beer steins, real Guinness pint glasses, and you paid a couple of Euros deposit and you got it back when you returned the glass.

• Let’s hold the fort there for a minute. Can you imagine a whisky festival in the USA where everyone is walking around with real glassware instead of plastic cups that end up filling huge dumpsters?

• Can you imagine that?

• The deposit on a beautiful, branded beer stein was two Euro, and in America, we’d kill each other with them, break them on the ground, or steal them because for two Euro, what a bargain.

• The same with the plates if you got currywurst, which, I’m told, is a Berlin thing. It’s a kind of sausage, cut into chunks and swimming in a sweet curry sauce. I imagine some German chef thinking of ways to cook something foreign and exotic and throwing sausage in his leftover takeaway curry and yelling, “Heureka, ich habe die Currywurst erfunden!“

• You paid a deposit on the bowl and got it back when you returned it with your real fork.

• Seriously, there were rarely any trash cans. Everything got returned. How bloody civilized.

• Nobody was trashed.

• Two bikers returned just before closing and purchased a couple of personalized cask-filled bottles. They were quite buzzed and cheerful, speaking some English. I noticed Security assisting a man to a bench and chatting with him. He’d be in cuffs and sent to Venezuela if this were in the USA.

The whole thing was easy and civilized and adult. There were some kids, some dogs, real beer mugs, gallons and gallons of whisky, and nobody got off the reservation.

Ya gotta like that about Germany.

And the music.

Irish band, singing mostly in German, and Irish dancers doing that stomping in tap shoes with their hands by their side thing.

It’s as though the world assumes that if you’re pouring whisky, you have to get as much Irishy and Scottishy as possible.

I was amused.

And then again, there was The Whisky Thief.

To all y’all who don’t know what a Whisky Thief is, it’s a bit of a sieve or suction tube made of copper and looking very ancient, loaded with patina and panache and gravitas.

We brought a small cask with actual maturing whisky, happily maturing in the charred oak inside and besides selling bottles and pours from bottles, I could slide this lovely copper tube through the bung and cover the top hole with my thumb and draw out several drams, and carefully let them loose into waiting glasses.

Damn.

That is just cool stuff, no matter how worldly and sophisticated you are.

And it didn’t hurt that the whisky was fantastic. Dark, savory, full cask strength at maybe 55 APV, or maybe 110 proof or higher. It was rich and full of flavors and everyone who went through the ritual had their first taste just glowed.

And it IS a ritual.

There were some big retailers with booths, and I’d take a draw in the WT and carry it high over my head, thumb on the back hole, and wind my way through the crowds to deliver a shot.

I might as well have been carrying The Ten Commandments.

The crowds parted.

Make way for the man with The Whisky Thief.

We sold a lot of bottles filled by WT. It took 20 or 30 draws, carefully lining it up with the top of the bottle. The owners of the new bottles knelt by the cask, holding their precious new bottles next to the bung so I didn’t spill any.

One older gentleman was kneeling awkwardly to hold his bottle near the cask for a long time, and I could tell his back was hurting, but he wasn’t moving.

I said, “Whisky Yoga” and he laughed. Some things translate across cultures easily.

I always spilled.

And it got on the label, which left whisky streaks and added to the beauty.

Hundreds of photos and videos were shot of those who bought a custom-filled bottle.

Again, there are over 7,000 laws in the USA that keep you from doing this, and they’re all stupid.

Germany and the UK both treat whisky the same way Americans treat guns, as in, yeah, whatever.

And America treats guns the way they treat whisky, yeah, whatever.

It doesn’t take a genius to see who’s smarter.

The average German lives two years longer than the average American. Bring on the whisky barrels, tankers of beer, and glorious bratwurst and leave the ammo locked up.

There are some real cultural differences and once you spend time in Germany, you understand them and see the logic.

The peaceful life on Fohr Island is easy, natural, and comfortable. The big-cityness of Berlin was comfortable as well, full of nice encounters with people going about their lives, boating on rivers, sitting in cafes, and going to whisky festivals to eat, drink, and dance Irish jigs, even taking a minute to try to speak some English to some lost guy in a cowboy hat.  

And of course, the joy of having a cold beer at a whisky festival in a big, glorious glass stein and thinking that’s, of course, totally normal.

I like it here. I think I’ll hang out and write more stuff.

It must be some kind of glue.

- Chris Greta -
Sep 8, 2025