2021: Flowering took place three weeks later than in 2020, with disruptions that would eventually translate into a naturally small crop with lots of millerandage. A relatively (in the case of June, extremely) rainy summer brought continual threats from fungal infections and mildew. But August turned cool, mitigating that threat at just the point when fruit began, slowly, to ripen. September brought sunshine, and by the middle of that month – notwithstanding the three weeks later flowering time, wet mid-summer and cool August – the Keller harvest commenced a mere two weeks later than it had in 2020. A sunny October saw the leisurely arrival of Riesling in the press house. “Two thousand and twenty-one is a vintage with low yields and the concentration and ripeness for terrific dry wines,” says Keller. “But all things considered, it’s a vintage for Kabinett, and we’ve never made so much Kabinett” – which included his first-ever Kabinett from Abtserde and Kirchspiel. Correspondingly – but also in keeping with overall yields – the aggregate volume of Grosses Gewächs is Keller’s smallest in many years.

“It’s a gift nowadays,” insists Keller, “to experience a vintage in which the vines” – and, one might add: ‘their growers’ – “have to struggle to achieve ripeness.” That’s a verdict with which few who experience the remarkable combination of intensity with energy and buoyancy projected by his 2021s will disagree. “As far as I’m concerned,” he adds with a grin, “every vintage could be like 2021!”

As usual, my tasting experience by no means covers all of Keller’s offerings from the vintage. Certain absences are noted parenthetically in connection with my notes on directly related wines. I generally do not get to taste Muskateller or Rieslaner (the latter including in 2021, as usual, an Auslese). More notable among omissions are Riesling Auslesen from both Morstein (a highly unusual exception to the dry rule) and Abtserde. Notes on Keller’s vintage 2021 Pinot Noirs will be taken soon before or after their projected bottling date of late spring or early summer 2023. (DS)

2020: A warm spring and hot, dry summer made the 2020 growing season seem very familiar. Keller points to light showers during flowering as having been beneficial by resulting in loose clusters, yet also causing millerandage. Keller emphasizes how important long-term soil and cover crop management was to limiting shut-down in vines or eventual drought-engender bitterness in the wines. Late summer brought just enough precipitation – more in Dalsheim than in Westhofen – to help fruit ripening but not to cause trouble, and already by the end of September, Keller was ready to begin picking Riesling. That said, conditions in October were ideal for stretching out the harvest to month’s end.

As usual, my tasting experience by no means covers all of Keller’s offerings from this vintage. I generally do not, for instance, get to taste Muskateller or Rieslaner. Notable absences among wines that Keller showed me from this vintage are the “Feuervogel” Silvaner and a Hipping Kabinett. (There was no 2020 Pettenthal Kabinett.) (DS)

2019: While 2019 featured a notoriously hot, dry summer, Keller is keen to remind us that hours of sunshine from July through October were in fact down by a hundred from 2018. As to the rain that fell – for most growers, inopportunely – in late August, Keller insists that “we were, honestly, just enormously relieved when it came pouring down.” He reports having had no serious botrytis problems nor berries splitting, likely, he suggests, on account of thick skins having been fostered by summer’s drought and fierce sunshine. Keller suspects that small, thick-skinned berries also help explain the high acid retention of this vintage. His strategies for moderating must weight are clearly working because in a year when many Kabinett-loving colleagues struggled to harvest grapes appropriate to that category, Keller relished a bumper crop of Kabinetts and directed all of his Pettenthal and Hipping to that genre. Whether more a measure of how rapidly his grapes obtained optimal ripeness or of how critical it was to avoid any rot or burst berries – and, more likely, it’s both – Keller’s team finished harvesting for this vintage’s Grosse Gewächse on October 15, unusually early by estate standards.

My experience never encompasses anywhere near all of Keller’s offerings. But as my tasting of 2019s was delayed due to Covid and other calamities, the range is especially restricted, and confined to vineyard-designated Rieslings and Pinot Noirs (plus, of course, G-Max). (DS)

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