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?