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Utz Graafmann wanted to do "something with wine". The computer scientist from the Ruhr region had already founded a successful IT system house for doctors and set it on course for growth. At the beginning of the 1980s, this was still considered rather hopeless. The most modern computer at that time was the IBM PC without a hard disk, but with two floppy drives. "At that time, it was completely crazy to believe that you could organise a medical practice with these computers, of all things," Utz recounts and laughs. He proved the opposite. It only took a few years and his company was working with the biggest in the industry, for example, with corporations like Nixdorf or Datev in Nuremberg.

Finally, he discovered wine. The experience with it excited him, he became a wine freak. But the wine world was still analogue back then. The most modern means of communication was the fax machine, because internet access for private individuals cost a small fortune per month. All information was printed on paper: magazines, the first wine guides and books on the subject. But the young digital entrepreneur no longer thought in terms of printed pages. He sought exchange with other wine lovers, was interested in tastings and meetings with other wine maniacs. In 1998, internet access became affordable for everyone, there were browsers and more or less stable connections. And so he did what he did best: He designed and programmed software. Utz rewrote an internet application written for completely different purposes into the first German wine forum in many hours of night work. It hit the spirit of the times: the number of free registrations literally shot through the roof.

Among the many thousands of users was Norbert Tischelmayer, an IT professional from Lower Austria who, like Utz, was addicted to wine. He filled his knowledge gaps with small articles that he researched and wrote down for every question that came up. The first collection of 800 small articles in pdf format emailed to Utz thus developed into what is now the world's largest Wine lexicon with over 23,000 entries, the viticultural history of over 100 countries in the world and the biographies of over 600 international wine personalities.

In the forum he also met the net-savvy wine merchant Marcus Hofschuster, who planted an idea in Utz's head: a digital, always up-to-date guide to German wines. At that time, there was only one wine guide in Germany, the publishers showed hardly any interest in the topic. Marcus thought he could think through the idea with Utz, form it into a concept, prepare it and launch it step by step. One or two years, that was his horizon. Utz's digital clock ticked faster. Two weeks later he called Marcus and told him succinctly: "We're doing this now."

In the beginning, Utz, as the sole owner, financed his wine start-up with banner ads, just like all the other websites did. But after a few years this no longer worked, the banner prices dropped rapidly. It was getting serious for Wein-Plus.de. Utz sensed this trend very early, he was one of the first in Germany. The digital entrepreneur therefore relied on a subscription model that no one in Germany had tried before. Later he developed it further into a membership. "Apart from Stiftung Warentest, no one was earning money with high-quality content at the time. So we came up with a subscription. That worked pretty well from the start," he recalls. And so, out of a passion for wine and digital communication, Utz and his growing team of like-minded people created the largest wine platform in Europe within 22 years.

Utz has a family, is the father of three children and often works at home or in a camping bus; the team is spread across Germany and the world. Digital tools, clouds and platforms are as natural to all of them as the tractor is to the vintner. And yet Utz maintains personal contact with everyone, as if he were standing in the doorway next door with his coffee cup. The digital world is his cosmos. But wine is the orbit in which he moves. The intensive work on the website relaunch is largely finished, now he can prepare the next one. Utz has had ideas, concepts and approaches in his head for a long time. Because for Utz, the time after the relaunch is the first phase before the relaunch.

Since when have you been interested in wine, Utz?

It's a long story. When I came to Erlangen in the 1990s, I was already interested in wine, but drinking it was enough for me. My IT system company had founded a branch there at that time. At the opening ceremony, a guest I didn't know gave me a bottle of white wine. I don't remember what it was. It stood on the shelf for a long time until I decided: I'll try it now. It tasted really good! So I took the empty bottle, went to a wine shop and told him: I want to try something like that. Well, and soon I was standing in front of his shelves twice a week. The subject became more and more exciting for me. Soon I subscribed to the wine magazine "Alles über Wein" and read every page. But that wasn't enough for me. I couldn't find out about dates and tastings in the area, I couldn't exchange information with other wine lovers. How was I supposed to find them? In 1998, I wanted to start something new professionally. My first idea was to create a platform where I could meet wine friends and exchange experiences. That was the wine forum. I started it in 1998, and wein.plus grew out of it.

How and when did you meet Marcus Hofschuster?

We met online in the wine forum! At that time I had an idea: we often and intensively exchanged ideas about wines, but there was a problem: everyone debated about wines that all the other users could not taste. I wanted to solve this dilemma with the "Weinstammtisch", which we continued for many years in a modified form with the wine package. We bought interesting wines centrally and sent them to everyone interested so that they could all share their impressions. Someone had to choose them though! So some users of the forum met regularly and discussed them. Often this took place privately at my home. One who was always at the table was the wine merchant of the time, Marcus Hofschuster, whom everyone called "Sam". He had an impressive, precise sensory system. At one of these meetings he told me about the idea of a German wine guide. At that time, there was only the controversial Gault Millau in Germany. I was completely thrilled by this idea. So I called him and said: "Let's do that now".

Was there an idea in the development of wein.plus that didn't work at all?

That was my first business idea on the subject of wine. I had started the wine forum and developed a business idea for it that would be called a "marketplace" today. Wine merchants and vintners could rent a shop and run it independently. We also wanted to make sure that internet users interested in wine could quickly find these shops on the net. But that never got off the ground. We were way too early with it, it was completely illusory. What did develop rapidly from the start, however, was the wine forum. Many long-time members will still remember the heated debates that took place there. This set us on the road to today's wein.plus.

Could you imagine that the reviews of wein.plus will also appear in book form at some point?

Absolutely not. We use the terrific advantage of working online: There are a lot of wines whose ratings you can follow at wein.plus over 20 vintages. Often they are supplemented with Sam's ratings, which he keeps adding to with a few years of maturity. That is unique in the wine scene, you can never do something like that in book form! Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini once told me that Wein-Plus is a huge wine archive. That's why he loves us so much. Our decades of information and evaluation depth in combination with our topicality cannot be reproduced by any book in the world.

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