2014 Riesling trocken A.P. #1

Affable brothers Volker and Werner Knipser first attracted domestic notoriety for their abundance of barrique-aged wines, including powerful Pinots, but also Cabernet, Merlot and, beginning in 1994, Germany’s first experimental planting of Syrah. This should not, however, be taken to imply that Riesling is neglected. And any critics (including this one) who once expressed skepticism about the quality potential of their ostensibly top sites in the nearly flat, predominantly loess and sand northernmost sector of the Pfalz should be convinced by what they have lately been putting into the bottle. (Those best sites all feature calcareous, chalky underpinnings.)

Werner’s son Stephan nowadays takes the lead in the cellar and this seems to me among those Pfalz estates that have in recent vintages been trending toward more graceful, refreshing and subtle Rieslings. Pinot Noir here, too, has gained in nuance at the expense of power and mineral-animal-fruit exchange at the expense of cosmetic oak, an evolution especially apparent in the promising 2013s that I tasted last September before bottling, although I have here reviewed only current offerings. “We don’t want our Pinot to become in the least jammy [marmeladig],” commented Volker Knipser. While some of this estate’s prominent partisans among the press might have you believe otherwise, not all of the Knipsers’ at-times outlandishly experimental bottlings or self-described “rarities” succeed. But sometimes they can delight as well as surprise. This estate also bottles homages to the time-honored Pfalz traditions of the Orleans grape as well of blending Riesling with Gewurztraminer (the 2014 version of which, though, had been snapped up seemingly without remainder before I could even sample it).

The Knipsers’ labeling has undergone some rather confusing contortions during the new millennium, as they attempted to feature prominently (on what were technically back labels) the original names for their vineyards rather than those of the relevant Einzellagen of which those family holdings are part. As a result, for a time the two labels on any given bottle might convey very different information. After wrestling with the authorities, the Knipsers seemed to have resigned themselves to the Einzellage designations. Now that registration of geographically narrower names is legally possible, Werner says “probably we’ll do it,” though with an undertone that suggests he’d like to forget the whole matter and the bad taste it left in his mouth. Speaking of which, I cannot help mentioning that the Knipsers are among those VDP Riesling growers fighting to retain the right to label a wine—to say nothing of its being vineyard-designated—as “Kabinett trocken.” “Kabinett” here is not another name for “inexpensive” (two delectable Knipser dry Riesling bottlings cost much less) but rather a means of calling attention to alcoholic and stylistic levity. If you think of the Knipsers’ Laumersheimer Kapellenberg Riesling Kabinett Trocken as a weak little wine taking a site name in vain, then--sorry to be bluntly accusatory, but . . . –I would suggest that you betray a weak imagination and small-minded misunderstanding of terroir.