How we made it
The first vintage of our “Bat-Nat” has been harvested in September 2015. It’s made of Schwarzriesling / Pinot Meunier growing on shell limestone. The vineyard is pretty much in the middle of our town. We started farming it organically in 2014. And as the vineyard had been treated well before we took over the plants didn’t suffer from that switch – at the cost of a reduced yield. 2015 was a low-acid year so we picked the grapes relatively early.
With 50% of the grapes crushed we gave it a skin contact time of 24h before pressing followed by a sedimentation time of 48h. The fermentation took place outside and was pretty slow – it was a really chilly fall. In the middle of November it could finally be bottled with a residual sugar of 15 g/l. Fermentation stopped at 6 g/l RS and started over again after spring kicked in. In July 2016 it finally got disgorged by hand.
The story
In 2014 we took over a vineyard situated in the town of Kitzingen where our winery is situated too. It used to be outside of town but over time houses and gardens grew around it, it’s a very unusual and unlikely place. Shortly after posting the first pictures of the vineyard we met a guy who dedicates a good part of his life to the bats of our area.
Together with local bat hero Christian Söder we developed the idea of a cycle: we get guano from local bat colonies – a wonderful fertilizer. In return we give a share of the revenue back to the bats via the Landesbund für Vogelschutz. And we put a bunch of bat boxes in the vineyard to offer opportunities for those lovely animals to hang out as they hunt at night – about 15 different species as Christian found out! The bat on the label is the grey long-eared bat which has become very rare in our area. It’s also incredibly cute and we want to help it stay around.
Fact sheet
Variety: Schwarzriesling / Pinot Meunier
Location: Kitzinger Eselsberg
Soil: shell limestone
Harvest: 16.09.2015
Yield: 40 hl/ha
Skin-contact for 24h
Sedimented for 48h
Bottled after 8 weeks with 15g RS
Disgorged: July 2016
Bottles produced: 800
Alcohol: 12%
Acid: 6.3 g/l
Residual sugar: 0.8 g/l
Bottle size: 0.75 l