How we made it
The second vintage of our “Bat-Nat” has been harvested in September 2016. 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.
With 50% of the berries crushed (after destemming) we gave it a skin contact time of 48h before pressing. Fermentation had started already so sedimentation was not an option anymore. We bottled in the end of November with 17g/l of residual sugar and disgorged warmly in July 2017.
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: 15.09.2015
Yield: 40 hl/ha
Skin-contact for 48h
Bottled after 2 weeks with 17g RS
Disgorged: July 2017
Bottles produced: 880
Alcohol: 12%
Acid: 5.2 g/l
Residual sugar: 0 g/l
Pressure: 2.1 bar
Total SO2: 4 mg/l
Bottle size: 0.75 l