Since 862 AD The World’s Oldest Winery Has Been Operating

Staffelter Hof, formerly known as Stavelot, boasts documented evidence of winemaking dating back over 1100 years, making it the oldest winery in the world that is still running.

The earliest documented mention of this winery dates back to A.D. 862, in a manuscript where King Lothar II donated St. Peter’s Chapel to Stavelot Abbey, along with the “wine rent.”

Since the Christian faith carries deep associations with wine, many abbeys and monasteries all over Europe were church-sanctioned wineries during the Medieval period.

Due to this, for much of its history, Staffelter Hof was either managed by the church or the national government until the land was purchased by Peter Schneiders in 1805.

Since then, Schneiders’ descendants have kept the winery — which specializes in riesling wines — in the family, passing it down through the generations to this very day.