From 53 year old vines (nearly twice the age of those that inform his basic bottling), Keller’s 2009 Silvaner trocken Feuervogel dispenses with the “Gruner” part of its grape’s name and adds the designation “firebird” in an effort to call attention to its being Silvaner of a different sort. Vinification in cask helps accentuate the sense of ripeness, textural richness, and underlying structure on display, but in fact the flavors build on those of his “Gruner” bottling. Green herbs, a hint of gooseberry, apple, and honeydew melon deliver juicy refreshment, while hazelnut, freshly-milled grains, peat, and chalk add seriously complex undertones. Silken in texture, this positively shimmers in its long, vivacious finishing expression of mineral-fruit interplay. Employ it for at least half a dozen years. Keller notes that an old Silvaner vineyard like this is expensive to manage, since the rows are too narrowly spaced for any tractor and require the adaptation of specialized machinery. So he has taken the risk both to care for them and to ask 20 Euros retail per bottle (surely unheard of for this variety anywhere in the world outside of Franken).
Klaus-Peter Keller’s stylistic ideals and parameters – for more about whose application to vintage 2009 consult the quotes from him at two places in my introduction to this report – were aptly realized in a collection of Grosse Gewachse (all bottled in mid-August) that ranged from 12.5-13.5% in alcohol. “I can always cut away bunches,” he remarked apropos yields. “That merely means extra work. But you can’t hang new bunches on your vines, and in warm years, to have that third or fourth one is critical” to avoiding too rapid an accretion of sugar. The cool temperatures by the time he harvested his top sites in early November not only, claims Keller, offered the ideal circumstances for phenolic evolution and acid retention, but also for gentle extraction in the initial hours after harvest, when the fruit received the period of maceration that he believes is essential to getting at “the two-thirds of Riesling’s aromas are in its skin.” And as if the rest of the wines did not represent a sufficiently amazing performance, it concludes with no fewer than four Trockenbeerenauslesen (5 were planned, but the grapes left in Hubacker got rained-out), about which Keller claims not to know for sure whether it represents a record for his estate (though it definitely does for the period of his tenure, and – unbelievably – he repeated that record again in 2010). “Day in, day out we sorted grapes into the night,” relates Keller, but it should be borne in mind that the quantities of each of these T.B.A.s – as I have noted in each tasting note – remained minuscule. Keller is excited about 2009’s potential with Pinot as well, but surveying his finished 2008 Spatburgunder – all of which were moved solely by gravity, a forklift having served to elevate their assembled volumes for bottling – there is more than enough excitement generated by those as well to merit a search of the marketplace and to offer wine lovers a striking glimpse of the quality levels to which German Pinot Noir can successfully aspire. I’ll report on the 2009 reds next year. (For more about Keller’s governing principles with Riesling as well as Pinot, consult the introduction to my notes on his wines in issue 187.)
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