2022 Keller Chardonnay "R" 

It speaks to everything Robert and I want to accomplish with Source Material.

First, it introduces a ****ing very cool bottle of wine that, at the moment, you can't get anywhere else. In fact I do believe this is the U.S. premiere of one of the biggest stories in the German world of wine, though as with anything Keller, the story is bigger than only German wine.

Second, it gives us the chance to talk about the "new Germany" and to have a more in-depth discussion about how things are changing, and why... and what maybe it all means.

Finally, it allows us to speak very specifically and very directly about the people, the families, who make up this beautiful culture of wine, the families who make these beautiful wines.

And here, the story becomes even more poignant because the new Chardonnay program at Keller is largely being shaped by Julia and Klaus Peter's eldest son Felix - though obviously the entire family is deeply involved.

One of the great joys of this business is being a part of this generational change, watching it happen, almost in slow motion as the days and months and years pass.

I first met Felix in 2008(?); he would have been around 11 years old. On one of these early visits he gave me a bottle of a wine he had made, a 2007 Grauburgunder Beerenauslese. He gave it to me sheepishly; KP sat behind him at the table smiling proudly, explaining to me that Felix already wanted to make wines so they let him take a parcel of Grauburgunder to make his own wine, to give it a try.

I brought the bottle back to the U.S. and eventually opened the bottle for a staff tasting (I was working at the time in retail). We opened the wine with modest expectations, yet here was a shockingly good bottle. In a ripe vintage (2007) with a rather heavy-handed grape (Grauburgunder or Pinot Gris), Felix had shaped a wine of elegance and balance, great acidity.

It was a bottle of wine that I do think any winemaker with experience would have been very proud of... but it came from an 11-year-old boy.

***

Fast forward 15 years, to the spring of 2023: I'm at the Keller's for a vintage preview with a small group of buyers. For the first time (at least for me), Felix begins the presentation with his own wines - a sparkling wine, some Pinot Noirs, a Chardonnay. Again, KP is there, he's helping to pour as Felix leads the tasting, smiling proudly.

Once again, the group at the table goes silent. I've been at enough of these sorts of tables to read the room; you can tell quite easily when people are smiling politely and when they are genuinely moved. In this case it was most definitely the latter. I'll admit that I myself was floored.

The wines were stunning.

***

For now, because the wine is superb and superbly limited, let us just say the following. The wine is sourced from new parcels that the Keller family has acquired in the Zellertal, an area about 10 minutes south and west of their hometown Flörsheim-Dalsheim. It is a very cool, windswept valley and the family has made the very expensive, very time-intensive and very labor-intensive choice to plant the vines - Pinot Noir and Chardonnay - at up to 18,000 vines a hectare. (The vineyard picture above is from a tour of these new high-density plantings given by KP from the summer of 2022.)

Yet the results, even with these young vines, is incredible.

***

This is only the beginning of the story.

The plan initially was to publish this offer with an interview with Felix. While we weren't able to get it done in time for this offer, it will be coming. We will discuss, in some serious depth and detail, the project, the vineyards and the wines, life growing up at the Keller estate and what it's like to work with his parents. We will discuss what he sees as the current state and future of German wine.

But please watch for a coming email that should offer a lot more insight into the wine and the larger narrative of this new Keller and this new Germany.