Kleines Gut

Kleines Gut
Frederike Schmidt & Daniel Kurrle
Stuttgart-Uhlbach, Württemberg, Germany

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Daniel and Frederike started making wine in 2020 with three hectares on the outskirts of Uhlbach, a small village just half an hour from our Stuttgart shop. The area here is a geologist’s paradise with marl (Mergelstein), clay (Keuper) and sandstone (in this case, Schilfsandstein) that date back millions of years to the Middle Triassic period.

The grapes were previously sold to a local cooperative but Daniel and Fredi were determined to work as an independent winery, focusing on minimal intervention in the cellar and rich biodiversity in the fields. Within two years, they had become a fully independent winery making approximately 5000 bottles of natural wine per hectare.

Their winemaking combines age-old techniques with highly intuitive farming, using compost teas and stone powders to enrich the ecosystem in the vineyards. The vines have been slowly and patiently weaned off the chemical input of previous years, and now thrive in nutrient-rich soils. Especially in seasons of downpour or drought, it is this balanced ecosystem which plays an invaluable role in the growth of healthy vines and quality grapes. In Daniel’s words, ‘biodiversity is our most powerful workmate’.

The cellar dates back to 1546 — a pocket of history tucked beneath the family home where Daniel and Fredi raise their two daughters. Around four metres below ground level, the developing wines are protected from fluctuating temperatures; winter offers a cool stability and the summer’s heat is tempered by the earth. 

Each vintage brings new, exciting wines to the portfolio, along with recurring favourites such as their well-loved Vin de Soif.

Some words from Frederike and Daniel:

We farm gently and easy … We don’t want to destroy the insect and plant communities in our vineyards by heavy machines, tillage, deadly chemicals and fertilizers. Healthy soils and strong plants are more important for us than “stylish and clean” vineyards. We try to establish a balanced vineyard-ecosystem. When nature is pushing in summer, when it comes to harvest in fall, it wouldn’t work without the great help of our family and friends

Our packaging is naked and reduced to the essentials like our wines. It is designed to have a small ecological footprint. Light bottles, fsc-certified paper, bio-based binding agents for labels, corks and tapes.

Our winemaking is low-tech and highly instinctive. We harvest the grapes by hand, we’re mashing the whole-bunch grapes in vats by feet, we press the grapes gentle and slow with an old press. The wines ferment on their indigenous mother yeasts and age exclusively in old oak barrels. Our 1546-build vaulted cellar is a calm and sheltering home for our wines and barrels. After 12 to 18 months in oak barrels (225l–500l) the wines are filled into bottles by gravity. In exceptional cases of need we add tiny amounts of sulfur to the mash before fermentation or to the wine before filling (10–20mg/l). Except of that we’ll never add anything to our wines but grapes and love.