Pasteuning 150 years: Amsterdam-Zuid wine shop marks jubilee
It opened as a grocer in 1876 and has stood on the corner of Willemsparkweg since 1893. On Sunday the family business celebrates with fifteen wine houses at the A'DAM Toren.
Pasteuning 150 years: the wine shop at Willemsparkweg 11 in Amsterdam-Zuid turns a century and a half old on 19 December. The celebrations start earlier, with a jubilee tasting on Sunday 15 November at the A'DAM Toren.
Het Parool reported on Friday that the shop has been a fixture in Zuid for 150 years and has no plans to stop. That stands out in a city where most neighbourhood shops of that age disappeared long ago. Ron Blaauw recently closed Ron Gastrobar in Amsterdam-Zuid; Pasteuning is still there, on the same corner it has occupied since 1893.
From grocer to Pasteuning wine shop
What began in 1876 as a grocer now sells a thousand wines on the same corner.
Bartholomeus Pasteuning opened the business on 19 December 1876 as a grocer selling cured meats, delicacies and colonial goods. After two earlier addresses he moved in 1893 into a newly built corner building on Willemsparkweg and Alexander Boerstraat, close to the Concertgebouw. The first stone was laid on 21 July that year by his five-year-old daughter. According to the shop's own history, Pasteuning was one of the first shops in Amsterdam with electric light and a telephone.
His son Gerrit took over around 1915 and lived above the shop with his wife and twelve children. After his death in 1939 his widow and children kept the business going through the war and rationing. Wine only entered the range in the 1950s, and bottles gradually pushed out the delicatessen. Otto Pasteuning, son of Gerrit's son Jan, became owner in 1987. Since 1999 the shop has been run by Erik Muller, whose mother is a Pasteuning, as the fifth generation.
Today the shop says it stocks around 1,000 wines, plus more than 120 spirits and over 60 sakes. Champagne runs from Pol Roger and Krug to Jacques Selosse, and Pasteuning also sells Zalto glassware and supplies wine lists to restaurants and bars.
A jubilee tasting for Pasteuning 150 years
On Sunday 15 November fifteen wine houses from five countries will pour in The Loft and The 360 at the A'DAM Toren in Noord. There are two sessions, from 12:00 to 14:30 and from 14:45 to 17:00; a ticket costs €15. The same day there is a winemakers' dinner with an afterparty for €225.
The shop itself stays open Tuesday to Saturday. Anyone who would rather drink a glass than buy a bottle can head to the Jordaan, where Toscanini has just opened its Enoteca Capri wine bar.
The actual birthday falls on 19 December. At its fiftieth anniversary Pasteuning was still a grocer without any wine; at 150 its shelves hold bottles from around the world, in the same building from 1893.
