2015 Riesling Laumersheimer Kapellenberg trocken

The Knipsers enjoyed impressive success in 2015, but Volker Knipser was entirely correct when he asserted that “not just quantitatively but also qualitatively, 2015 was pretty comparable with 2014, a very good vintage for us, but one that enjoys less reputation because Germany-wide it was so much more variable.” While this year’s impressive Kapellenberg and Kalkmergel Rieslings were bottled in April and May, respectively, the Grosse Gewächse weren’t bottled until August. Due to the sheer number of Knipser bottlings, some from improbable grape varieties, and to my time constraints on tasting trips, I cannot offer tasting notes on all of their wines, and the precise offerings tasted – beyond their Chardonnay-Pinot Blanc blend, their Syrah, and a core of Rieslings and Pinot Noirs – will differ from year to year. My notes also reflect this estate’s welcome practice of allowing select wines, including most of their Pinot Noirs, to spend time in bottle, unusually numbered in years, before release.

With considerable justification, the Knipsers are at least as well known for their Pinot Noir as for their Riesling. Recent Pinot releases have struck me as increasingly promising, and Volker Knipser’s commentary on the evolution of his family’s approach is worth quoting in some detail. “For Pinot Noir,” he related, “2010 was the great lesson for us. It looked like a negligible vintage for red wine and at first we thought, we’ll harvest everything as usual, but maybe we should just put most of it into a Weissherbst [rosé] and a generic red. But the evolution of these reds in cask was amazing. And from then on, we stopped harvesting with an eye on must weights and started to pay attention to other criteria. High ripeness brings fat, color and tannin, but Pinot Noir lives from elegance. Even with rosé, vinified like white wine, you can get great wine, although it’s hard for people to wrap their heads around that notion.” As indicated in my reviews, the 2013 and 2012 vintage Pinot Noirs that formed the Knipsers’ calendar 2016 releases are impressive, and the outlook for vintage 2014 is even more impressive. (For much more about this estate, consult the introduction to my account of their 2014 Rieslings, and for some detail regarding the vineyard sites, consult also my tasting notes on those 2014s.)