Our history

The history of weinfreaks.de is inextricably linked with Werner Elflein. Born in 1969, the graduate mathematician from Neuss began to take an interest in wine already in the 1980s. He can still remember his first two wines, two dry Franconian Silvaner Kabinetts from 1983 and 1984. Both lean, rather neutral in style of the time and not of outstanding quality, but with differences that Werner associated with the single vineyards and vintages.

During his engagement with mathematics, he began to study wine and its different origins intensively. He travelled to most of the German wine-growing regions and got to the bottom of the terroir in the vineyard and in the wine glass.

Werner paid particular attention to the development and the ability to mature. Quite a few wines have accompanied him for more than half a lifetime. Werner has 40 years of wine experience.

Together with Christian Segers († 2018), he founded weinfreaks.de in the summer of 2001 and refined the original concept.

In 2010, he established blind tastings according to today's standards. Since then, he has continued to enhance the tasting methodology step by step, partly through his own insights, partly through constructive suggestions for improvement from wine friends and from the winegrowing community.

For more than ten years, in addition to weinfreaks.de, Werner also ran the weblog Werner Elflein | Mein Weintagebuch.