Ulf Fuhrer with his prod­uct Zumwhol at D4 bar in Welling­ton.

‘Zum­wohl’ does­n’t sound like some­thing that orig­i­nates in Welling­ton, but it turns out that Ulf Fuehrer (appar­ent­ly a real name!) and his Aotearoa Dis­til­leries Ltd com­pa­ny that makes the award-win­ning schnapps are based right here. Add that loca­tion to our love of pub­lic ser­vants express­ing opin­ions, our twit­ter addic­tion, our mutu­al admi­ra­tion agree­ment with Pub­lic Address and the hope that the good peo­ple at Sput­nik will throw some free­bies our way, and we’re super hap­py to tell you about Zum­wohl’s lat­est cam­paign.

Almost thir­ty years after New Zealand’s infa­mous snap elec­tion, a Welling­ton dis­tiller is bring­ing old-fash­ioned fun and satire back to mod­ern day pol­i­tics.
Ulf Fuehrer, mak­er of tra­di­tion­al Ger­man schnapps Zum­wohl, says one of his great­est pas­sions in life, apart from schnapps, is pol­i­tics.  Final­ly, he’s found a way to bring the two togeth­er.
“Alco­hol and elec­tions have always been an inter­est­ing mix.  The ‘84 snap elec­tion was effec­tive­ly born of a whiskey bot­tle,” says Fuehrer.
“The image of a vis­i­bly tip­sy Mul­doon announc­ing the elec­tion is the best known and most par­o­died moment in our polit­i­cal his­to­ry.  Some peo­ple still refer to it as the ‘schnapp elec­tion’.”

Recog­nis­ing this year’s elec­tion wasn’t attract­ing a huge amount of pub­lic inter­est, Fuehrer has seized the oppor­tu­ni­ty by declar­ing the return of the schnapp elec­tion, albeit this time with a mod­ern twist.

Fuehrer is giv­ing away a bot­tle of Zum­wohl every day of the cam­paign for the clever­est or fun­ni­est tweet about the elec­tion.  After just one week, the response has been much stronger than antic­i­pat­ed and entries have already been retweet­ed to more than 100,000 peo­ple around the coun­try.

Fuehrer says Twit­ter suit­ed his schnapp elec­tion well because it makes it sim­ple for peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate, and doesn’t require a lot of time or con­cen­tra­tion.

“Twit­ter is the intel­lec­tu­al equiv­a­lent of a shot, so we saw it as a per­fect fit for the schnapp elec­tion,” says Fuehrer.

Any­one can join in the schnapp elec­tion by fol­low­ing @zumwohlparty and using the #zum­wohl hash­tag. Just don’t be fun­nier than us, okay?