Feinbrennerei Sasse has been distilling in Schöppingen since 1707
The Feinbrennerei Sasse in Schöppingen in the Münsterland region is one of the last fully integrated grain distilleries in Germany. Rüdiger Sasse manages the company as the 15th-generation owner; its core product is Lagerkorn, aged in wooden barrels for at least four years. At the 2025 World Spirits Award, the distillery was the only grain distillery in Germany to be named a World-Class Distillery.
Feinbrennerei Sasse is a grain distillery in Schöppingen in the western Münsterland, whose operations were first documented in 1707. It is one of the last fully integrated distilleries in the region – from the grain to the finished bottle, everything is produced at a single address. The company gained fame with its Lagerkorn, a grain spirit aged in oak barrels, and also produces liqueurs, gin, and non-alcoholic aperitifs. To this day, the distillery is registered in the commercial register as Theo Sasse e.K.
The Münsterland was once the stronghold of German grain distilling. Almost all of them have disappeared. In Schöppingen, one of the last remains – and it is precisely there that someone decided that grain spirit does not have to be a drink for the bar counter, but one for the glass.
The house was first called Wilmink
The history of the Feinbrennerei Sasse begins in 1707 – though without a single Sasse in sight. At that time, the operation of a distillery and brewery by the Wilmink family was first mentioned in official records.
The Wilminks expanded: in 1778, the merchant Bernd Anton Wilmink II leased the Schöppingen town mill. Anyone who operates a mill and distillery together has the grain and its processing in one hand – and that very principle has held true at this address to this day.
The name Sasse only appeared 150 years after the first mention. In 1857, Elisabeth Wilmink married the merchant Franz Anton Sasse, who from then on managed the grain distillery's business. Two families became one, and the distillery received the name it still bears today.
Franz Anton was evidently not someone who merely managed what he found. He expanded the business in 1885 and installed the first steam engine in Schöppingen – industrialization came to the village, and it arrived via a distillery.
In 1918, Theo Sasse took over the family business. His name remains in the commercial register to this day, even though he has been deceased since 1976 – the company is still called Theo Sasse e.K. In 1972, the old site had become too small, leading to the construction of a new facility with a modern distilling plant, and after Theo's death, his son Ernst Sasse continued to run the house.
In 1985, a sixteen-year-old stood before the ruins
Ironically, in 1918, the same year Theo Sasse took over, the spirits monopoly was introduced – and with it, the production of mass-market industrial alcohol became possible.
For a grain distillery, this was the beginning of a long decline. Sales on the German market dropped sharply, grain spirit was no longer in demand, and many distilleries struggled to survive. In 1985, the blow fell on Schöppingen as well. Rüdiger Sasse was just 16 years old at the time and, as the distillery itself recounts, stood before the ruins of a family tradition that was already nearly 300 years old.
Two years later, the turning point came, and it took the shape of a bottle. In 1987, Rüdiger discovered an old bottle of his great-grandfather’s grain spirit and realized the potential inherent in aged grain brandy. "It was a complex, flavorful grain spirit and the birth of Lagerkorn," Rüdiger Sasse says of this find. That same year, Ernst Sasse experimentally reintroduced the old technique of barrique aging for a premium grain spirit.
That was not an obvious choice back then. Grain spirit was considered clear, young, and cheap—a drink you knock back cold and never talk about. Barrels were for whisky and cognac.
If you have ever tried a young and an aged brandy side-by-side, you understand immediately what was at stake: one is a raw material, the other is finished.
What is remarkable is what happened afterward: nothing. For ten years. It wasn't until 1997 that the Münsterländer Lagerkorn V.S.O.P. came onto the market. That is a long time to figure out which barrel, which duration, which distillate – but barrel aging simply cannot be accelerated. Anyone who fills a barrel in 1987 only knows ten years later whether the idea works.
Today, the Feinbrennerei Sasse’s core product is aged for at least four years. In 2022, the 15th-generation family business is managed by Rüdiger Sasse – the sixteen-year-old from back then.
From ten years in the barrel to non-alcoholic aperitifs
The range at Feinbrennerei Sasse is categorized into five areas – and the span between them is the real point. "Product innovation has a long tradition here," says Rüdiger Sasse.
The Lagerkorn is the foundation. The Münsterländer Lagerkorn V.S.O.P. demonstrates what barrique aging does for grain, the Atlantik Finish takes a direction with peat malt and Jerez casks that one wouldn't expect from the word "grain," and the Cigar Special is intended for evenings when something is smoldering nearby.
For the Sasse Liqueurs, the natural liqueurs are called "Naturtalente" (natural talents) because they always start with the raw material – elderflower, apricot, cocoa, coffee. The oldest among them is the Sechser Kräuterlikör: produced in Schöppingen since 1928, six organic ingredients give it its name, and the recipe has remained unchanged to this day.
The Paula Pumpernickel range was created in 2021 in collaboration with a Münsterland food blogger and includes cream liqueurs.
Under Gin & Juniper you will find what the County of Bentheim contributes. And with the non-alcoholic aperitifs, it becomes clear that a distillery can practice its craft without alcohol: the Wellpaero series and the Junipaero manage completely without it. In between, you will find the Münsterland aperitif Amérie with regional raspberries.
Fully integrated means everything at one address
The Feinbrennerei Sasse is one of the last remaining fully integrated distilleries in the Münsterland – a clunky term that describes the operation quite accurately.
Fully integrated means that mashing, distilling, aging, and bottling all happen at the same address. In the spirits industry, this has become the exception: many brands buy in raw alcohol, flavor it, and bottle it.
Those who mash their own grain, however, decide on the grain, the fermentation, and which part of the distillate makes it into the bottle and which does not. You can taste those decisions later – they are the difference between a spirit with a signature and a product from a kit.
The fact that this type of operation still exists at all has become an exception in the Münsterland. The region was once full of grain distilleries – small businesses, often attached to a mill or a farm, that processed what grew in the fields all around. Few remain. Schöppingen is one of them, and the distillery stands there at the same location as it did in the days of the Wilminks.
That also explains why a barrique-aged grain spirit and a non-alcoholic lemon syrup come from the same hall in Schöppingen. Anyone who can extract flavors from grain, flowers, and peels can do so with alcohol or without. They call it "reinventing grain spirit" there, and looking at the range, you can take that literally.
First Spirit of the Year, then World-Class Distillery
At the 2025 World Spirits Award, Feinbrennerei Sasse was the only grain distillery in Germany to be named a World-Class Distillery – one of 18 worldwide.
Three years earlier, the applause was for a single bottle: at the 2022 World Spirits Award, the Atlantik Finish was named Spirit of the Year – that grain brandy with Islay peat malt that no one would identify as a grain spirit in a blind test.
The title goes not to a single product, but to the house: for the breadth and consistency across the entire range. For a grain distillery, this is late vindication. For decades in Germany, grain spirit suffered under its reputation, while the exact same idea – grain spirit aged in oak barrels – is called whisky elsewhere and sold for a high price.
That a house which has been distilling at the same spot since 1707 draws international attention precisely with a rediscovered old technique has a certain logic to it. You just have to stay long enough and look in your own cellar eventually.
One euro per bottle goes to the heath
Since 2010, Feinbrennerei Sasse has contributed one euro for every bottle of Grafschafter Kräuterwacholder (juniper herb spirit) sold into a nature conservation fund.
The money is held in a specially established special fund at the Naturschutzstiftung Grafschaft Bentheim, and over the years, more than 40,000 euros have been raised. This has funded 15,000 euros each for new wooden walkways in the Rieselfelder bird sanctuary and for the renaturation of a nine-hectare juniper grove at Bardel Monastery.
The connection is closer than it initially sounds. The berries for the Grafschafter Kräuterwacholder and the Grafschafter Heide Gin are picked by hand in the heaths of the County of Bentheim. Juniper heath is not wilderness, however, but a cultural landscape – it becomes overgrown within a few years if no sheep graze on it anymore.
So, in the summer, Bentheimer Landschafe are there – a breed that itself almost disappeared and now counts over 1,100 breeding animals again. No sheep, no heath; no heath, no berries; no berries, no bottle.
"To preserve good things for the following generations," is how the house describes the idea behind it. For a family that has been at the same address since 1707, that sounds less like a brochure and more like experience. In 2009, the distillery was one of the founding members of the Münsterland Seal.
If you want to know what this is all about, start with the Lagerkorn – it shows what ten years of development and four years in a barrel do to a grain spirit. And if you prefer to compare, take the Lagerkorn Tasting Box: three 40ml brandies, an evening for two, and after that, you will know which direction is yours.
