Man Becomes Wine Queen When No Women Step Up

It's a tradition that dates back more than a century, in which grape-growing villages in southern Germany select local women as "wine queens" to serve as ambassadors for the produce of their region.

"After the present wine queen already added a third year to her duties because they could not find a successor, I jokingly said that I would take the wine queen job," Sven Finke toldĀ NBC News.

Locals took Finke's offer seriously, and Finke has since been crowned wine queen of the Moselle River town of Kesten and is taking wine queen seminars.

Kesten has a total of 350 inhabitants but is home to 25 wineries.

Finke is the first male wine queen to represent the area. "I want to show everyone that men are just as well suited to this job as women," he said.

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