2017 Vater & Sohn Bacchus

How we made it

Bacchus has always been a tricky variety with regards to rot (at least in the vineyards we inherited) but 2017 was the hardest vintage so far. After throwing more than half of the grapes on the ground we decided to separately collect the rotten ones and try making a wine out of it. With a noble rot percentage of 70% and a failed experiment in the back we went safe and added 2 mg/l SO2 to the juice of the rot-batch. And it became a surprisingly nice wine. Two days before bottling the wine was racked, roughly filtered and blended with the wine from the healthy batch before it was bottled with the addition of 2mg/l SO2.

 

Fact sheet

Variety: Bacchus
Location: Kitzingen
Soil: Shell limestone

Harvest: September 2017
Yield: 50 hl/ha
Malolactic fermentation and aging in stainless steel
Bottled: March 2018
Bottles produced: 1,500

Alcohol: 10.5%
Acidity: 5.1 g/l
VA: 0.66 g/l
Residual sugar: 1.8 g/l
Total SO2: 42 mg/l – 20 mg/l added onto the must, 20 mg/l at bottling
Bottle size: 0.75 l