Wwe. Dr. H. Thanisch

The winery's name means, literally, "the widow". Wwe. is the German abbreviation for Witwe, and it refers to Katharina Thanisch: when her husband, Dr Hugo Thanisch, died at forty-two, she took charge of the house at twenty-nine with three small children. The year was 1895. Katharina did not merely keep the estate going: she was a founding member of the VDP, the association of Germany's leading growers.

That was not an exception but the start of a habit. Since then the house has been led by women across five generations, an uncommon case in German wine.

The family has made wine in Bernkastel since 1636, in the middle of the Thirty Years' War, which makes it one of the oldest continuously family-held estates on the Mosel. Its most celebrated parcel is the Bernkasteler Doctor, which has been in the family for two hundred years and has passed through more than seven generations.