Wedding and Wine Cellar Customs

Barrel Whacking (Thumping the wedding cask)

A custom that certainly originated from primeval times is the "noise custom", namely driving away bad spirits by making a lot of noise and has resurfaced within a wedding setting in practices at the eve-of-the-wedding party ("Polterabend"). The very word "Polterabend" indicates that a lot of noise is going to be made on this evening (the German word is "poltern"). The end of "life as a single person" is also celebrated on this evening.

An eve-of-the-wedding custom that is seldom practiced is "smashing dishes", which is purported to have originated with the Ancient Greeks, who smashed their clay pots in order to dispense with their old implements and so leave their previous life behind them and to set up house together as the start of something new.

In the wine-growing areas of eastern Austria, the noise-making crowd goes on a wine cellar crawl at the eve-of the-wedding party, where it is considered even now to be a sign of inordinate curiosity and impropriety for a guest to thump the casks in order to ascertain whether they are full or empty.

Thumping the cask is only allowed at the eve-of-the-wedding party and has been preserved as a lucky and noisy custom. The bridal couple are put into a large, empty, worn-out cask - the noise-making cask, which is noisily thumped with spigot staves by the eve-of-the-wedding party crowd and symbolically determined "to be filled with love, wealth and a lot of children".

With this "thumping in" of the bridal couple in the empty wine cask, the rustic custom of driving away bad spirits by making a lot of noise has taken on its own peculiar forme.