Tatiana von Metternich-Winneburg was born in Saint Petersburg, the second daughter of Prince Hilarion Sergueïevitch Vassiltchikov (1881–1969), a member of the Russian Imperial Parliament Fourth Duma, and his wife, the former Princess Lidiya Leonidovna Vyazemskaya (1886–1946).

[1] The family fled Russia in 1919, following the Bolshevik October Revolution by joining a group of people who had been evacuated by the British fleet.

King George V of the United Kingdom was the cousin of the last Tsar and maternal nephew of widowed Empress Maria Feodorovna.

[2] They took refuge, initially in France, where she and her sister Princess Marie Vassiltchikov (1917–1978), called Missie, were educated at the Lycée of St Germain-en-Laye.

[1] She studied painting in Munich and later the family rejoined her father in Lithuania where she worked as a secretary at the British Embassy.

His great-grandfather was Austrian Chancellor Prince Klemens von Metternich, who established a lasting peace at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.

In collaboration with Henkell & Söhnlein, a winery and member of the Oetker Group, they created the sparkling wine, "Fürst von Metternich".

In 1987, she was a founding member of the Rheingau Musik Festival, together with Michael Herrmann, Claus Wisser, Carl Jung, Walter Fink and others.

[7] Upon her husband's death in 1992 she faced that he had left a considerable portion of his fortune to a mistress, which meant she was forced to sell her remaining share of Schloss Johannisberg to the Oetker family.