How we made it
The second generation of the white “Fledermaus” has been harvested in September (Müller-Thurgau) and October (Silvaner) 2016 and bottled in February 2017. It consists of about 75% Müller-Thurgau and 25% Silvaner. The whole Müller-Thurgau clusters were pressed, the juice sedimented, racked and aged on the full lees. Until some point in winter when one of the tanks became oily. We decided to filter the tank and re-vitalize it by stirring in the lees from a different Müller-Thurgau tank. It worked really well. Phew.
The Silvaner batch is the pre-harvest from two skin-fermented batches. Those Silvaner vineyards had sunburn so in a first round of picking grapes all the ones with sunburn were put in extra boxes, fermented with a short maceration time and fermented in the tank.
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: Müller-Thurgau (75%), Silvaner (25%)
Soil: Shell limestone
Harvest: September / October 2016
Crushed and pressed in a pneumatic press
Malolactic fermentation and aging on the lees in steel
Bottled: February 2017
Bottles produced: 9,900
Alcohol: 11.5%
Acid: 4.8 g/l
Total SO2 (nothing added): 4 mg/l
Residual sugar: 0 g/l
Bottle size: 0.75 l