The town of Bernkastle was first recorded in civil documents in the year 1291.  It has always had a population of about 1000 because of the limited space available.

Landshut Castle was destroyed by fire in 1692.  It has recently been repurposed as a restaurant.

St. Michael’s Fountain is in front of the Bernkastle Town Hall built in 1608. 

This is the Spitzhauschen pointed house. The ground floor is quite small and, as the owners had more money, they built up and expanded a bit.

Bernkastle still has mostly original buildings because there was very little war damage as there wasn’t industry in the town.

The St. Michael Church, built in the gothic style,  is 400 years old.

These numbers and letters on a church door involve a three kings tradition called chalking the doors in celebration of Three Kings Day. The digits are for 2023 while the letters are for the kings names Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar and the plus sign represents the cross.

Bernkastle Tower is 600 years old.  It was once used for defense and now it is for bells.

Area vineyards are always established on a slope for more sunlight and the type of soil.

In Bernkastle, in preparation for our tour, we were told   “You’ve never had a wine tasting like this” and they were right. It was very unique!

The wine we were first served was Dokter wine.  It was so named because an important sick person was given the wine and got well.  

People in the area began to call the local wine, now the most famous riesling in Germany, the Dokter Wine. It tasted very light and I’m sure it made us healthier!

We were then able to begin the “do it yourself” portion of the tour – totally unsupervised. We could have spent hours there for our entry fee of about $20 per person.

There were 141 wines available to us in a wine cellar dating back to 1458.  The vast majority of the wines were riesling because of where we were on the Mosel River.  

They various wines were grouped by room according to dry, semi-sweet and sweet.   Yes, some rieslings were considered dry.

We looked to see if something on the information placard intrigued us.

Then we found the bottle in the nearby cooler with the corresponding number.  

We probably tried a dozen.  It was very unique and enjoyable.

Randy’s assessment: “My wife has had too much to drink and it is 10:15 in the morning.”

We had such a good time that we bought our glasses and brought them home in our luggage as a keepsake.

We made our way back to our Viking long boat, the Alsvin.

Randy is ahead walking with Claudia, possibly the best cruise director ever, and certainly the best we’ve ever encountered. She knew every one of her 160 ish passengers and where we were at all times. She knew every detail about everything.

We were scheduled to go on a tour of Trier in the afternoon. Trier is the oldest city in Germany and a UNESCO world heritage site.  It once rivaled Rome in size and influence. It was the birthplace of Karl Marx and home to a tunic thought to belong to Jesus at the time of his crucifixion.  

It was certainly worthy of an afternoon visit and we usually opt for every tour going anywhere when we possibly can. However, this day we opted to stay on the Alsvin while almost everyone else was gone.

Quiet space outside your cabin on a Viking River boat is very difficult to find and we opted for it.

We enjoyed the quiet ship and packed for disembarking the next day.  We read and visited the wheel house.

We asked our questions about operations and about right of way along the river.

The answer was that stretches of the river are treated differently and are designated by mile markers.  Other sections differ port to port.  In general, the priority is given to the vessel going downstream.

After a few hours our fellow passengers came back and we had our last night aboard the Alsvin.

Our travel companions, Warren and Connie, were very social, stayed up late, and met so many people! They enjoyed them selves immensely.

We (mostly I) tend to be a little ( a lot) more reserved but still met some very nice people. This was our last afternoon onboard with Warren and Connie and our new friends Vicki and Chuck.

We were in Bernkastle enjoying wine on September 8, 2023.

Next up: We disembark the Alsvin, board a bus to Paris, and visit Luxembourg on the way.