The end of February comes with the sun rising considerably earlier each day. A dark and extraordinarily wet winter is coming to an end with a grand final: we’re expecting temperatures below -10°C (14°F) for a couple of nights next week. Generally this is not a problem. But for this kind of mini bulldozer I wanted to move some soil to a gap of the vineyard it is a problem. First it was too wet, now it is too slick.
Part of the winter work is also everything compost. We’ll have three different fertilizers this year as most soils still need help to get back on their own feet. There are the pomace which have rotten fairly nicely (mixed with Effective microorganisms right after pressing). There is the probably best horse shit compost in the world (which we’ve had before) – I’ve never seen that many earthworms in just a hand full of soil. And there is of course bat shit aka guano. I mixed it with Leonardite and Effective microorganisms to ferment for a couple of weeks. It’s going to be very concentrated, we won’t need a lot of it making it an ideal fertilizer for the plots we have to do by hand anyway.
What else have we been up to? After having finished pruning we’ve repaired broken polls and wires.
We’ve started preparing the Bacchus Pet-Nat for disgorging by turning all the bottles upside down.
There were two fairs already in 2018, La Dive Bouteille in France and Bottled Alive in Czech Republic. The trip to France included several pretty exciting events thanks to Fleur Godart’s and Jan Čulík’s talent to organize awesome things.
Like a massive tasting at Rudi Trossen’s house on our way back.
Or a spontaneous tasting session in the dungeon of Francois St Lô.
And now? The first bottling weeks are coming up! We’ll be able to keep most of the 17s at least until summer, all but the white Fledermaus and the V&S basics which will be bottled together with the 16 Große Wanderlust, the 16 Spätburgunder and the 15 Wilde Heimat. We’ll be disgorging the Bacchus Pet-Nat (and hopefully get the new vineyard ready for planting). Looking forward to present you the new cuvées soon!