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 at Funen. In the early 1990's, the collection reached 10,000 bottles and due to the vast number, the collection had to be placed somewhere else.

The largest collection of unopened beer bottles in the world
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 of 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 driven by Mr. Sonne, who has continued his lifelong passion, as the owner of the collection.

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, which is 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 a certificate confirming that this it is the largest collection of beer bottles in the world. This was in February 2007.