Now not slated to be released until 2011, Keller’s 2009 Westhofener Morstein Riesling Grosses Gewachs seems almost at pains to prove the wisdom of that choice by offering a pithy fruit skin chew and an almost gum-numbing, persimmon-like pungency, allied to tingling brightness of fresh lemon, pink grapefruit, and bitter tartness of its zest that offer a prickly rebuff to anyone anticipating immediate pleasure. This is an embryonic and severely concentrated young Riesling, though one whose energy certainly appears equal to its sheer density. It finishes with pointed bitterness, blazing citric intensity, and a formidable, near avalanche of crushed stone and other less identifiable mineral elements – seemingly unstoppable ? which is not the same as saying it’s irresistible (at least, not for now)! I wrote in my initial notes that “only time can tell whether this has a gentler side to its undeniably complex and formidable personality, and it will be most interesting to follow its evolution during the coming decade.” Eleven days later (!), Keller confronted me, blind, with the contents of the same bottle, and the wine was not only pristine in terms of its absence of oxidation, it also displayed greater primary juiciness and clarity to a more refined diversity of mineral elements.
Klaus-Peter Keller’s stylistic ideals and parameters – for more about whose application to vintage 2009 consult the quotes from him at two places in my introduction to this report – were aptly realized in a collection of Grosse Gewachse (all bottled in mid-August) that ranged from 12.5-13.5% in alcohol. “I can always cut away bunches,” he remarked apropos yields. “That merely means extra work. But you can’t hang new bunches on your vines, and in warm years, to have that third or fourth one is critical” to avoiding too rapid an accretion of sugar. The cool temperatures by the time he harvested his top sites in early November not only, claims Keller, offered the ideal circumstances for phenolic evolution and acid retention, but also for gentle extraction in the initial hours after harvest, when the fruit received the period of maceration that he believes is essential to getting at “the two-thirds of Riesling’s aromas are in its skin.” And as if the rest of the wines did not represent a sufficiently amazing performance, it concludes with no fewer than four Trockenbeerenauslesen (5 were planned, but the grapes left in Hubacker got rained-out), about which Keller claims not to know for sure whether it represents a record for his estate (though it definitely does for the period of his tenure, and – unbelievably – he repeated that record again in 2010). “Day in, day out we sorted grapes into the night,” relates Keller, but it should be borne in mind that the quantities of each of these T.B.A.s – as I have noted in each tasting note – remained minuscule. Keller is excited about 2009’s potential with Pinot as well, but surveying his finished 2008 Spatburgunder – all of which were moved solely by gravity, a forklift having served to elevate their assembled volumes for bottling – there is more than enough excitement generated by those as well to merit a search of the marketplace and to offer wine lovers a striking glimpse of the quality levels to which German Pinot Noir can successfully aspire. I’ll report on the 2009 reds next year. (For more about Keller’s governing principles with Riesling as well as Pinot, consult the introduction to my notes on his wines in issue 187.)
Imported by Sussex Wine Merchants, Moorestown, NJ; tel. (856) 608 9644, Dee Vine Wines, San Francisco, CA tel. (877) 389-9463, and Frances Rose Imports Inc., Huntley, IL; tel. (815) 382 9533
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