How we made it
The third vintage of our “Bat-Nat” has been harvested in September 2017. It’s made of Schwarzriesling / Pinot Meunier growing on shell limestone.
The grapes were destemmed, crushed and sitting on the skins over night before being pressed. The juice was sedimented for two days and fermented really slow being bottled in November 2017 with 10g/l of residual sugar. Other than the previous vintages we allowed the 2018 to age for more than a year before being warmly disgorged by hand in January 2019.
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: 15.09.2017
Yield: 30 hl/ha
Skin-contact over night
Bottled after 2 months with 10g residual sugar
Disgorged: January 2019
Alcohol: 11.5%
Acid: 5.4 g/l
Residual sugar: 0.1 g/l
Pressure: 2.5 bar
Total SO2 (nothing added): 4 mg/l
Bottle size: 0.75 l