Eugen Verpoorten founded the company in 1876 in Heinsberg, Germany. The distiller from Antwerp opened the “Liquor Factory & Colonial Goods of H. Verpoorten”, where he invented advocaat, on Heinsberg’s High Street, next to the noblewomen’s collegiate foundation. The strictly guarded recipe for the egg liquor has remained unchanged since the company was founded.

His son Hubert Verpoorten continued the business successfully, and William Verpoorten, born in 1890, then headed the operation in the third generation. In 1920, he relocated the site to Berlin because he saw no promising prospects of a new start in the French-occupied Rhineland after his return from the First World War. The building was later destroyed by a direct hit during the Second World War in 1944.

Once production had been resumed after the Second World War, initially at an existing branch in Straubing, construction of today’s headquarters in Bonn commenced in 1952.