Authenticity to place and self - a study in Keller GGs

As border restrictions have eased in China, one of my goals in 2023 is to continue my journey in learning, to engage with people, wines and ideas on the cutting edge, to travel, to find inspiration, and to record this process through writing. All in hopes of taking what I learn and applying it to my work in the vineyard and cellar at Miaolu.

My first piece is on a fabulous tasting dedicated to one of the world’s most thoughtful producers. Though I’ve been fortunate to share a few bottles with friends in the past, this was my first opportunity to taste more than one of Keller’s wines at a time. The comparison offered many insights into both the personality of site and soil types as well as the elements that make these wines so special.

The evening’s lineup

As the evening went on it became exceedingly evident that Keller’s wines transcend the grape variety and its stereotypes, much in the same way Rayas and Clos Rougeard do. It was a real privilege to taste these wines side by side, with astute companions and with delicious Cantonese cuisine.

Textbook varietal wines are grown and made throughout the world, but all at the table agreed that these wines could only be the Rheinhessen and the Mosel through the lens of Keller.

It was particularly obvious that through Klaus Peter’s (KP) intense work in the vineyards and his painstaking, pre-industrial approach to pressing he captures the spirit and potential of each site in a way that is singular.

Speaking to KP before the event, he shared a few details on his very particular approach to pressing -

“The small plots are pressed with two basket presses- one more than 100 years old.

We put whole clusters in and press very slowly - sometimes up to three days for 400,500 liters….

It’s high pressure on the grapes but crystal clear juice with a very fine phenolic structure that gives a lot of stability to the must. We don’t protect the must but naturally let it oxidize- that’s in my opinion the best way to guarantee the later longevity of the wine.

Then after a few days fermentation starts spontaneously…….

It’s an old method that takes time..but I like a lot

You need great soil and great work in the vineyards and a good pressing - then it’s really super good for the quality of the wine.”

From this correspondence it’s clear that Keller’s approach to pressing and the dedication to vineyard work is crucial to how his wines sing of their sites’ unique personality - in fruit, balance, structure and texture. The resultant difference in tasting wines from the Hügelland on limestone, the Roten Hang on red slate and the Mosel on grey-blue slate was stark and striking.

Much like the 15 Kirchspiel I had in 2018, the 17 Hubacker in 2019, Keller’s younger bottles on the evening seemed to open immediately with the chiseled density I associate most with his wines. Whereas the 12 Hipping needed almost six hours of air and time to reveal that same intensity of structure, much like the five hour slow build I experienced with the 11 Abtserde this past January and the 14 Kirchspiel in November 2022.

We began the evening with the 19 Frauenberg Riesling. Wonderfully aromatic from the first pour, this showed both the floral and white peach exuberance of young Riesling, as well as the saline, chalky, citrus intensity of Keller on limestone.

The aromatics are classic but what’s much more interesting is how the wine feels, the way it interacts with the palate. The combination of tense, electric acidity with the rippling intensity and palate pressure lent by the chiseled, phenolic, dry extract core is incredible. The wine positively grips the tongue, this sense of musculature and structure here is most obvious of the first three wines in our first round of tasting around 3 hours post opening. A total three dimensional wine already at such a young age. This wine felt the perfect introduction to and encapsulation of Keller’s approach to pressing, and how he continues to push boundaries.

I loved the 17 Kirchspiel as it’s lost the white peach and peach blossom exuberance of immediate youth, speaking instead through the quiet purity of lemon zest, grapefruit pith, lemon juice and oil, combined with a beautiful sense of saline, chalky precision.

Nothing feels extraneous nor out of place, with a similar, though slightly quieter sense of electric, densely packed chalky structure compared to the 19 Frauenberg. Incredibly pure, focused, harmonious and so delicious. I particularly enjoyed this for how it illustrated the gradual sense of transition from youthful exuberance of the 19 into a state of quiet, but intense, serenity.

At 7pm, the 12 Hipping started off waxy, viscous and very delicious but lacking the mid palate structure and presence of the younger wines. Leesy, slightly reductive, more tropical, our first glass felt at its peak of generous maturity, but alas we were to be proven very wrong.

When we returned for our second round of tasting at 8:30 pm, the wine had totally transformed. The sense of waxy viscosity and tropical expressiveness had melted into the background, in its place a deep, chiseled sense of phenolic and dry extract musculature had emerged. In the time between pours, this transformed from a slightly ponderous outlier to having the density and impact of a solid brick - edges cut with great delineation and without a single ounce of fat.

From this and other recent bottles my sense is that with bottle age, Keller’s wines gain texture, depth and weight. As a result, they need even more air and time than in their youth for the core of chiseled structure to

A perfectly cooked shatteringly crisp cantonese suckling pig

emerge from beneath their increased dimension.

Certainly the 12 Hipping, 11 Abtserde and 14 Kirchspiel each felt younger, gaining in freshness and energy with each hour they were given to open - a characteristic shared by the world’s greatest white wines, irrespective of varietal.

The least ‘textbook’ of all the wines served, the 17 Pettenthal was singular in a way that evoked similar feelings of awe and confusion when comparing Rayas or Clos Rougeard to their regional counterparts. Redolent of gunflint, toasted white sesame, grapefruit pith, lemon oil and curd, this Pettenthal was simultaneously pure and complex, gently reductive and confoundingly beautiful.

Aromatically and structurally, Pettenthal is always incredibly individual, especially when compared to Keller’s other sites, and highly unusual if one is looking for ‘textbook Riesling’. Of all wines served that evening, this Pettenthal epitomized Keller’s ability to transcend the grape variety most.

In a lineup of incredibly dense and chiseled wines, this was most intense. My first sip is incredibly saline, almost pure rock salt, grapefruit pith, lemon zest with a solid mass of dusty, crushed rock laden mid palate density, cut and grip. This intense structure is buffered and balanced by a gently waxy, gunflint and sesame inflected mealy viscosity, less prominent than in the hipping, just enough to add a gentle, coating layer of tactility. Of all the wines we tasted, this was the one that captivated me most, but was polarizing for others.

Both this and the Hipping spoke clearly of how the expression of acid tactility in wines from the ‘Roter Hang’ on red slate differs so greatly from his sites on limestone. The acidities, though no less high and vibrant, feel more integrated into the flesh of the wine, more cohesive with the dry extract and phenolic mid palate structure compared to those from Limestone in the Hügelland. A phenomenon that is perhaps amplified by the Roter Hang’s proximity to the River Rhein and its ability to retain and reflect warmth throughout the growing season.

A totally different animal to its counterparts from the Rheinhessen, this first vintage of the 18 Schubertslay GG was all about elegance. Certainly with all the incredible depth, density and intensity Keller is known for, but with a quiet, caressing structure when compared to the chiseled musculature of the wines served before.

Incredibly pure and detailed orange zest, ginger and lime leaf with a mid palate imprint of subtly leesy, oily weight and powdery grip that feels finer in grain compared to the previous wines. The acidity, while bright, fresh and enlivening, is similarly more integrated, delicate and flitting.

Through the evening this grows in detail, structure and density, the pressure and imprint on the mid palate feels in multiples of the first pour without detracting from the overall impression of elegance.

After the intensity of the Pettenthal, the purity, detail, delineation, length and photorealism of this Schubertslay made me sit up and pay attention in a totally different way. I loved this for how true to this felt to both Keller’s values and the character of this very special site in the Mosel with its own rooted, centenarian vines.

The 15 Burgel Spätburgunder exploded with nutmeg, fenugreek and tamarind spice and subtle smoke that lifts and amplifies the sense of bright damask rose and crushed benihoppe strawberries. Really mesmerizing in my Sensory glass, much more open, floral and spiced as compared to a stemmy, firm and unyielding impression in a similarly shaped Riedel.

So many things I love here - aromatic exuberance, crystalline purity and savory, umami depth. Everything feels like it’s working together, the high toned lift and savory depth highlighting each other with great cohesion.

The acid is what gives this away as not being from Burgundy, even though the aromatic complexity and weight of fruit in this warm vintage feels so akin to its French counterpart. The brightness and sparkling energy brought by the acid really gives the sense of why KP aims to produce ‘red riesling’.

Towards the end of the evening, after a discussion on textural preferences in white wines, another taster made the assertion that wines and wine drinkers can be categorized entirely as being masochistic or hedonistic. This struck me as a little bit sensationalist, cynical and simplistic but ultimately makes the classic mistake of conflating preference and quality.

At least to my palate, pure austerity for its own sake is boring, and unbridled hedonism is equally uninteresting and moreover, tires immediately with the first sip. Although my personal aesthetic skews towards the former, I honestly believe no wine can truly be interesting without elements of both.

Finding a unique sweet spot of balance between the two is what the greatest wines of the world do best. Each of these six wines kept us on our toes, engaged and fascinated throughout the evening, exactly for the reason that the wines showed elements of both pleasure and austerity - a singular sense of energy, depth and density of chiseled structure that forms the base upon which textural and aromatic complexity grows and builds with bottle age.

All of this is to say, Keller’s wines are of another time, equally true to their vineyard origins as they are to his own understanding of what they can be. Every detail of work in the vineyard and cellar is fully considered and done to maximize the potential of the site and the ultimate wine in bottle, not to achieve an extreme of austerity or hedonism for its own sake.

I have so much admiration for Klaus Peter’s clarity of and commitment to his own values. I cannot think of another producer that would have the patience to commit to multi-day pressing, in an old manual basket press, simply because it’s what he or she believes is best for the wine. A quality increasingly rare in an impatient world.

What did I learn from this tasting that I hope to achieve in my own work and wines?

Learn, learn, learn. “If you want to produce fine wine, you have to know what fine wine is all about. So the first thing you have to do is travel and drink the world's finest wines. The second, work on your vineyards meticulously” is an oft published quote by KP and encapsulates so much about what makes this producer special. It’s clear that he has endless curiosity, loves his work deeply and is constantly in a process of learning how to push the boundaries of quality further. This is a quality I’ve encountered amongst each of the producers I admire most, they rarely drink their own wines, are continually engaging with other thoughtful growers and tasting the wines they admire.

Don’t be afraid of being yourself. That honesty and authenticity to one’s own values and aesthetic is as important as transparency of place, and that the two should never be mutually exclusive. But in order to do this, one must thoroughly understand and continually refine one’s own values, so that the wines produced are never swayed by fashion or trend. Tasting is a big part of ANDthis.

Find a way to do what is necessary. If pressing for three days makes for the best wine possible, find a way to make it work. Logistics and cash flow are the least glamorous and discussed topics in the world of wine, yet are often the deciding factors for whether something new (or very old fashioned), experimental or simply labor intensive is done or not. Much of modern enological product development and mechanization both for the vineyard and cellar has been designed to reduce labor cost and production time. Keller’s commitment to labor intensive, time consuming pre-industrial viticulture and winemaking is increasingly rare, even amongst the most artisanal domaines in the world of fine wine. However difficult, their success is proof that such an approach is both possible and viable, and is a great reminder to never settle for anything less than what I want to achieve.