Sparkling Win­ery

The north­east­ern Wein­vier­tel around Schrat­ten­berg pro­vides world­wide unique con­di­tions to pro­duce extra­or­di­nary sparkling wines. The inter­ac­tion of con­ti­nen­tal cli­mate, deep loamy and loess soils, which are very nutri­tious and chalky, as well as con­stant air cur­rents are the basis for that.

Our win­ery cov­ers 3 hectares of the best vines. Our main types are Welschries­ling and Chardon­nay. The com­pre­hen­sive care of the vines is extreme­ly impor­tant to us.

The exclu­sive hand pick­ing is the basic require­ment for the ele­gance of our sparkling wines.

We only use the first part of the must. That is how we can guar­an­tee the high­est quality.

After the first fer­men­ta­tion in the tank, we add sug­ar and yeast to the result­ing base wines the fol­low­ing sum­mer and fill them into bottles.

Dur­ing bot­tle fer­men­ta­tion, the yeast breaks down sug­ar into car­bon diox­ide and alco­hol. There­by the pres­sure in the bot­tle ris­es to 6 bar — that is how sparkling wine is created.

Sparkling wine can only be called “sparkling wine” if it is aged for 9 months “on lees”. We store our sparkling wines in the sparkling wine cel­lar and delib­er­ate­ly leave them on lees for a long time because they become creami­er and get fin­er bub­bles that way. At the same time, the yeast keeps them fresh. Aging time: 1 — 8 years

In order to remove the yeast again lat­er, we turn the bot­tles by hand for a peri­od of 2 to 3 weeks. By dai­ly 1/6 turns, the yeast slides down into the bot­tle­neck. Around 20 man­u­al move­ments per bot­tle are required. A part of the bot­tles is also turned automatically.

We remove the yeast by open­ing the bot­tles bot­tom up, where­by the yeast deposit gush­es out. Then we add dosage liqueur to deter­mine the sparkling wine type (e.g. brut or dry). The agraffe, a wire cage, then fix­es the nat­ur­al cork.

In the sparkling wine cel­lar, which my father and I built from three old wine cel­lars, we offer cel­lar tours and tast­ings in a beau­ti­ful dome, the rotun­da, for 6 to 20 people.