The World's largest Beer Collection

The story of the bottle collection began in 1968 when a Danish engineer started collecting unopened beer bottles from every corner of the world. Mr. Leif Sonne kept his collection within the frames of his private house in the provincial town of Svendborg.

In the early 1990's, the collection reached 10.000 bottles and due to the vast number, it was evident that the collection would have to be placed somewhere else.

The entire collection was transferred to The Carlsberg Breweries in 1993 and there it became a favorite stop for the tourists on the conducted brewery tours. At this point, the collection comprised 10.376 bottles. On May 27 1993, the local publisher of Guinness Book of Records recognized this accomplishment as a Danish record.

During the following years bottles were added to the collection from various channels e.g. Carlsberg subsidiaries and partners, tourists and Mr. Sonne, who continued his lifelong passion, as the owner of the collection.

Today the collection is a part of The Visitors Centre at The Old Carlsberg and more than 125.000 guests have the last year enjoyed the spectacular long lines of beer bottles, the many facets of colorful labels, innovative designs, peculiar names, giant beers and extremely rare bottles.

From the beginning only large scale or batch produced beer bottles with a degree of standardization were accepted into the collection. Misprints, unintended color variations and homemade labels are not accepted.

The collection is organized in geographical order followed by breweries and brands. Shoulder by shoulder the entire collection amounts to 1.213 meters / 3.979,66 feet.

A thorough count which lasted one whole day was conducted on October the 13th, 2006, and the final number reached 16.384. Based on this information Guinness World Records issued in February 2007 a certificate confirming that this it is the largest collection of beer bottles in the world.

10.02.2012 the number is 21.336. Leif Sonne