Ahr Valley is one of the most distinguised red wine-growing region in Germany, called the "red wine paradise". Due to catasthrophic floods this region experienced a „living hell" in the summer of 2021. More than a month's rainfall within 24 hours devastated much of western Germany, and Ahr Valley suffered the hardest hit: homes, businesses, bridges, roads, entire communities were swept away. More than 46 wineries of the region lost their facilities, cellars, wine barrels, machinery and hectares of vineyards.

Our aim was to raise awareness of this economic devastation of the region, and draw attention to the financial disaster that wine-makers of Ahr Valley were facing.

Despite the devastating loss of the wine-makers, some 200.000 bottles of wine – soiled with mud and dirt – survived the disaster. The bottles looked impossible to sell.

However, we created a special collection of wines from scratch, branded them as „Flood Wines”. Since they were coated in the original mud, we labelled them „authentically muddied”, and started selling them on a crowd-funding platform, dedicated to the rebuilding of the wine region.

The bottles soon became the symbol of the disaster as much as the solidarity and support of the wine-growers' community of Ahr Valley.

We wanted to introduce people to the devastating story of our „Flood Wines”. Each and every single bottle represented a unique winery, and symbolised the tragic fate of those wine-makers who were involved in the catastrophe.

The crowd-funding platform allowed us to get in touch with those who were interested in wines, and were sensitive to the issue and wanted to help. The sheer authenticity and „natural beauty” of the bottles covered in mud also attracted those who had some artistic feel, and open to innovative design solutions.

Last but not least we addressed those who expect positive action from brands, and appreciate them for stepping in to provide real solutions.

The design of our bottles were created by the flood itself: we left the bottles as they were, so their mud coated surface was "designed by nature" – thus each and every bottle had a unique mud design, that clearly symbolised the disaster as much as the solidarity and support of the wine-growers' community of Ahr Valley.

We created a multi-channel campaign, built around a crowd-funding site, that introduced the authentically muddied bottles, creating the narrative for them. All our communication elements directed people to this crowd-funding web-site.

Our „Flood Wine” video explained the whole story in a more detailed way. The city-light posters drew attention to the uniqueness of these bottles. In the online space influencers helped us spreading the story, which was supported by various celebrities and massive PR-campaign.

During the 3 months of the campaign we established "Flood Wine" as a unique brand, and it became an online phenomenon. Nearly 50,000 people bought our 200,000 "mud coated", individual bottles that survived the flood. We had more than 1 billion media impressions, the value of the wine rose by 4500%, and managed to collect more than 4,4 million Euros – that makes „Flood Wine” the most succesful crowd-funding campaign of Germany.

The campaign had a massive impact on raising awareness about the flood catastrophe of the region, and it promoted solidarity and brought help not just for the wine-growers, but for the whole Ahr Valley as well.