2011 Niersteiner Hipping Riesling Beerenauslese

Keller’s 2011 Niersteiner Hipping Riesling Beerenauslese gold capsule is founded on a search for tiny, generally pipless, super-ripe berries not strongly botrytis-affected, which no doubt helps explain its levity and animation, even though sheer concentration and richness convinced him to declare it “gold capsule.” “The juice ran as pure as from an Eiswein,” he remarks. Sage and peppermint, lemon and orange rind inform the nose and palate with liqueur-like richness, distilled intensity, and bittersweet candification. Despite its sheer density and the confectionary cast conveyed by dark honey, caramel, malt, and candied citrus, this shares vibrant interactivity with the very best wines in the present collection: floral, musky, and saline elements being pitted against citrus and herb concentrates. You’ll find yourself carried away by (and on!) a finish that both soothes and stimulates. Look for 30 or more years of profound reward. Cool nights from mid-summer on – but especially in October – played into and seemed to confirm Keller’s strategy of depending on low temperatures to truly release the aromatic potential of Riesling grapes (though he is the first to admit that he hasn’t a notion of why this is so). “It’s critical that you wait for Riesling until you can get into that period” of chilly weather, he opines, “and this year there was no reason you couldn’t wait; and then plenty of time to strategize picking. But,” he adds, “you couldn’t get there if you didn’t leave large enough yields,” because otherwise one’s picking hand would be forced by potential alcohol. In this year, Keller was able to purchase from Franz Karl Schmitt his iconic, eponymous former estate’s best parcels in Niersteiner Pettenthal and Hipping, sites with an illustrious reputation from bygone years that Keller has wasted no time in reviving and polishing. (It was inspiring to be able to walk these particular vineyards on the “Rotem Hang” with both of them late last summer and share in their obvious mutual delight at this historic real estate transaction.) Increased refinement, delicacy, and complexity continue to characterize the best of Keller’s residually sweet wines, and it’s clear that his range of “R” bottlings from top sites – approximately halbtrocken in specifications – is taken with increased seriousness and will expand, annually incorporating at least one such wine that (as is now also the case with Morstein, Abtserde and G-Max) won’t be bottled before August or released before the following spring. Nor has Keller given up his intention – VDP ideology to the contrary notwithstanding – of rendering residually sweet Kabinett from his Nierstein crus; it’s just that 2011 fruit was too ripe (and 2010 had been too scarce). Once again this year, despite devoting more time to tasting the wines of this estate than to those of almost any other, I still cannot pretend to have sampled Keller’s entire 2011 vintage collection, the especially notable omissions being T.B.A.s from Hubacker and Kirchspiel. (Time has also conspired to keep me from reporting on Keller’s 2009 Pinots, which I have as yet tasted only before they were assembled. Numerous details on Keller’s sites, stylistic ideals, and labeling practices can be found in my issue 198 report. And, apropos labeling, Abtserde continues to have to appear in print as AbtsE, even though for purposes of the Wine Advocate database we permit this site to state its name!) 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