2023 Keller Riesling "RR"

If you've ever met Keller, then you know that he is not only an incredibly passionate person (wine, food, cheese, politics, you name it), but he's also something of a viticultural historian.

If you had, for example, a bottle of Riesling from 1886 (as a friend recently did) Keller could locate the vineyard for you and tell you about the vintage... which he recently did.

Having this sense of history, Keller approached the 2023 vintage with a very singular purpose: To right the wrongs of a less-storied vintage, 1973... his birth vintage.

Maybe you think this is just a neat little narrative for the tidy sale, but the truth is I think this quest was meaningful for Klaus Peter - to give him wines to celebrate, if not his birth year, then his 50th birthday.

By the time I saw him in March of 2024, after the larger tastings he normally does for top buyers and friends, I had already heard outrageous stories of the wines. Across the board the wines were blockbuster. More than one person mentioned the Kirchspiel GG as extraordinary - though you could get a different favorite bottle depending on who you talked to. There was mention of a crystalline Muskateller! (Maybe you'll hear more about this someday soon...?)

So I arrived with high expectations... and left impressed and with a sense that Keller had truly mastered the vintage. I told him so... and he smiled, slyly, even proudly.

The wines of his 50th year will be wines remembered... some of them, very likely in 50 years and beyond.

The wines are intense, exceedingly dense and compact, laden with mineral, flower, and fruit. They have incredible thrust and drive. They are near-perfect expressions of a ripe vintage: juicy, yet not at all heavy.

And so we come to our insider's bottle, the "RR." The 2023, you might remember, was "supercharged" with casks from Abtserde and Morstein. This year, the wine is supercharged by a supernal rigor in the vineyard, a feel for the vintage, and one of the world's most extraordinary winemakers making himself something for his 50th.

I was texting with KP the other day, asking him if he had a good story for the 2023 "RR." He responded quickly and simply: "Really good wine. No story needed."

The "RR" is always one of Keller's top values given the extraordinary quality. As you'll no doubt know, the top Keller GGs - the dry wines - sell for many hundreds of dollars; the top Keller Kabinetts sell for many hundreds of dollars (to say nothing of the 2021 Keller Schubertslay Kabinett Auction which hammered for 1,200 Euros last year). 

The "RR" is very reasonable... and the only explanation I can come up with is that the market likes things either black or white, a or b, dry or sweet. The "RR" is in the middle, in this beautiful gray area... the word to consider is neither "dry" nor "sweet," but "balanced" - perfectly balanced.

The only bad news is that, without the additions of Abtserde and Morstein, there is considerably less wine this year - or at least our allocation was diminished. Either way, we don't have too much of this. So stock up.

Who wants a splash to celebrate an important birthday?

This offer is now closed. If you need help finding the wines please email orders@sourcematerialwine.com.