The claim
Down a narrow alley behind the Dam, this 17th-century distillery tasting room serves genevers and liqueurs made on the premises, poured to the brim so the first sip must be taken bent over the counter. The distillery dates from 1679; Wynand Fockink took it over in 1724, and the old copper stills still run behind the bar.
What the records show
The 1679 record is the founding of a small distillery in the Pijlsteeg by Jan Bierman. Wynand Fockink, enrolled as a citizen of Amsterdam in 1725, took the business over around 1730. Distilling and selling bottles is not serving over a bar: the Vereniging Vrienden van de Amsterdamse Binnenstad dates the tasting room's surviving interior to 1860, which is the earliest evidence found here for drinking on the premises. The firm passed to Lucas Bols in 1954, so continuity from 1679 to today is a claim about the address rather than one business. The Dutch national monuments register, read on 17 September 2026 through the Cultural Heritage Agency's linked-data endpoint, gives Pijlsteeg 31 as Rijksmonument 4746: a house with a bell gable dated 1689, its cornice nineteenth-century, with a timber shopfront and a shop interior of the eighteenth century. The gable is ten years later than the distillery's founding year, so even the building is not quite as old as 1679, and what the register records inside it is a shop rather than a bar.
| Year | What | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1679 | Claimed founding | The pub |
| c.1679 | Present building | Building fabric |
| 1860 | First record of a drinking house here | wynand-fockink.nl |
What to look for inside
- Distillery founded 1679, Fockink ownership from 1724
- Working stills on site, renovated 2013
- Traditional 'kopstootje' bow-to-sip ritual
Visiting
Proeflokaal Wynand Fockink is in Amsterdam, Netherlands, at Pijlsteeg 31, Amsterdam. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.
Sources
- wynand-fockink.nl/pages/our-location
- wynand-fockink.nl/
- www.amsterdamsebinnenstad.nl/binnenstad/268/wynand-fockink.php
- api.linkeddata.cultureelerfgoed.nl/datasets/rce/cho/services/cho/sparql
Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026
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