2007 Brunnenhauschen Abtserde GG

Keller’s 2007 Riesling Abts.er.de Grosses Gewachs is labeled with the odd periods to thwart the authorities non-recognition of the Abtserde, a high-elevation, high active lime site officially part of the “single vineyard” Brunnenhauschen. (And, in fact, if you go do www.abtser.de – albeit with a period differently placed –you will find an informative site that intrepid German retail merchant and good friend of Keller’s Tino Seiwert erected.) If you thought there could not be more concentration or piquancy, nor a more pronounced minerality than already experienced with the Keller 2007 Grosse Gewachse, then you did not figure on what is in this glass! Zesty, smoky, faintly bitter intensity of grapefruit and pit fruits with their pits; pumpkin and winter squash with their toasted seeds; an almost ashen but also saline, savory, nutty expression of mineral extract: all inform a Riesling of formidable finishing intensity, if not for now quite the clarity of interplay exhibited by the corresponding Morstein. This may just need longer to really strut its stuff; in any case, anyone lucky enough to latch onto some bottles should visit them at most sparingly during their first decade! Klaus-Peter Keller has acquired in time for the 2009 vintage a piece of Nierstein’s famous red Rhine shore slopes, but while he is obviously excited by the prospects he is anxious to remind me that “in the 15th Century, the bishops in Worms were not drinking wine from the Red Slope, but rather an aptes erden” – an allusion to the Abtserde vineyard, from which he began rendering dedicated Riesling in 2006 – “and they were certainly very savvy.” Keller considers 2007 “the most successful vintage in Germany for dry wine in a long while,” and when pressed admits he means an unprecedented vintage, since in his opinion he and his colleagues have been on a steep learning curve and were less well-positioned to take full advantage of past vintages that might have been theoretically ideally suited to Riesling trocken. Today, he says, he aims to “achieve slimness and elegance as well as ripeness.” Keller’s relentless pursuit of quality is encompassing longer cask maturation and later release of his best dry wines as well as experimentation in both red and sweet wine methodology. (Note that for all of the Keller 2007s I have tasted, there are also Auslesen from Hubacker and Morstein; a T.B.A. from Hubacker; and several other wines that I did not have chance to experience.) Judging by Keller’s three Pinots – tasted from barrel, and then from bottle – for him, at least, this is a vintage of exceptional potential in red as well. 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