I’ve known Klaus Peter and Julia Keller for, gulp, nearly 15 years. In 2006 or so, KP emailed me out of the blue, encouragingly reacting to some writing on German wine I had done. And this is, in short, is the essence of both of them: if you care, they care… and they care deeply. I haven’t met two more passionate people, smiling in the vineyards every morning, smiling in the cellar, as they are below.
2020 is their 20th anniversary working together at the estate; in the absence of visiting I wanted to take this chance to send them my love and congrats. In the absence of tasting many of the 2020ers, I figured I’d take this chance to present their, always erudite and insightful, 2020 vintage report. Keep in mind the following covers their holdings in the Rheinhessen and the Mosel, this is not a German wine vintage report at large.
“Joy commands the hardy mainspring
Of the universe eternal;
Joy, oh joy the wheel is driving
Which the worlds’ great clock doth turn.”
Dear wine friends,
It has been our cherished family tradition to taste the casks of the new vintage between Christmas and New Year’s. It can be an incredible exciting moment, tasting the results of the last harvest. You should have seen the sparkle in the eyes of Julia and Felix when they tasted the young wines of 2020! It simply feels good to see such happy faces, especially during these difficult times of COVID. I immediately thought of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy, a few lines of which I quoted above.
Enjoyment, friendship and mutual support are all values which are still as important now as they were in 1785, when Schiller wrote this poem – only four years prior to the founding of our family winery! Dear wine lovers, we hope our wines can convey a little bit of this happiness; it would undoubtedly be the most beautiful acknowledgement for our family.
The world seems to be turned on its head. It is therefore quite normal that we have become more reflective. At times we have asked ourselves, what is the meaning of all of this? What is really important to me?
In the play The Devil´s General by the Rhinehessen writer and wine lover Carl Zuckmayer, I found the answer to this most essential query from General Harras poignant:
“And the meaning is – not: power. Not: happiness. Not: satisfaction. But – beauty. Or – joy. Or both. For what I care, call it what you want – maybe there is no proper word for it. It is what we assume or own in our most precious hours. And for this – only for this we live after all.”
Our 20th Vintage together
2020 is the 20th vintage which Julia and I have been actively involved in. It is also the 15th vintage since 2006, when we took over the estate from my father Klaus who is still out in the vineyard supporting us every day. For us, the time has passed by in a flash. The beauty of our job is that we never get bored working in and with Mother Nature. There is no routine as the weather and climate are too unpredictable. The development and harvest of the young wines are time and again as thrilling as “Der Tatort” (a famous German crime series) on Saturday nights.
In 2020, we were faced with another challenge. During this unusual year, we not only feared for the health of our grapes, but more importantly for the health of our family and staff.
To protect our 20 harvesters who hand pick the grapes, we placed them in five different accommodations to ensure the required distancing. Thankfully, all staff as well as family members and friends stayed COVID-free. Mother Nature, too, played her part and sent us a fantastic late summer in September with beautiful sun rises and picture-perfect grapes. The quality of the 2020 wines are a soothing balm for all our locked-down, troubled souls.
The excellent report, Revelatory Rieslings, written by the iconic wine critic David Schildknecht was also a type of soothing balm for us. David Schildknecht was the German wine expert for Robert Parker’s The Wine Avocate for many years and now works for VINOUS. For almost 40 years, hardly any other international wine journalist has followed the development of German viticulture as intensely as David Schildknecht. He understands the extremely acid-driven Rieslings of the 1980s as much as the magnificent elixirs of 1990, 2001 or 2015. The man lives wine and offers a thoughtful and singular perspective. His passionate article about our wine growing region, the Rheinhessen, which was published near the beginning of December felt like an early holiday present. He wrote:
“Rheinhessen is currently unsurpassed worldwide by any other Riesling growing region.”
A quote like this makes us proud and happy, but is also a great motivator for the future. We hope to even improve on the dynamism and and quality of the past decades.
The Wine Year 2020
The year 2020 began, again, without a real winter but instead with lots of rain in February. After a dry winter in 2018 and 2019, we had hoped for a growing season in 2020 which would not make us worry about insufficient rainfall on a daily basis. So these gifts of rain, 137 mm in the Mosel for our Schubertslay vineyard and 102 mm for the Dalsheimer Hubacker in February were very welcome indeed! We hoped Mother Nature would give us a year without concerns for the water supply.
An unusually warm and dry April ensured that the vines started to awaken from winter early and were already sprouting by the middle of the month, almost 2 weeks earlier than usual. As soon as the vines start to blossom, we wine growers become anxious: the welcome rush of excitement and the anticipation for the new vintage is always mixed with worries of frost damage which could destroy hopes for a good vintage in just one freezing night.
Thankfully, there was no frost in April or May. The early-summer conditions continued to prevail and already at the end of May the Burgundian varieties were blossoming; the Rieslings followed a few days later. Occasional rainfall caused some “coulure” (small and loose berries), an initial and welcome loosening of the bunches, which allows the sun and the wind to quickly dry the grapes after rain. As a result of the good exposure to light and ventilation the grapes will grow a thicker skin and therefore be more aromatic and resilient than larger berries.
Yet, for the fourth year in a row, 2020 was again too dry. As much as we would love to see rain in June and July, we wine growers still painfully remember June 2016. At that time, it rained almost every second day. The increased fungus risk in the vineyard and crop protection required us to do everything manual and by hand; it was so wet not even a horse could walk in the vineyards the soil was so damp. We had to fix the vines in the pouring rain.
These images, still in the back of our minds, help us appreciate what we’ve got! Thankfully, in the Rhinehessen hills we have a vital limestone soil with good levels of clay; this helps the soil store and retain the water. In addition, the Grand Cru sites such as Morstein and Brunnenhäuschen have subterranean sources of water which continuously supply the grapes with water. Especially during these times, similar to a small child, the vines not only need the right care from the wine grower, but they also need the correct amount of essential nutrients, which come up through the roots and into the vines to ensure plant growth and development for the young grapes.
Still, there was immense delight and relief when it rained almost 60 mm in August. We and our vines could take a deep breath and exhale in relief. Thankfully, the heat through the year did not cause any notable sun damage, nor were there any severe weather conditions. For August, the vines could relax and gain strength for their last stage.
When the first Spätburgunder grapes were ready to be picked in early September, we were pleased about the small- and loose-berried bunches, for the perfectly healthy grapes which could not be more beautiful. The succession, vintage to vintage, of outstanding Pinot Noir is almost eerie.
The attentive care of our vineyards together with almost ideal weather conditions in September and for the start of October put a perfect “work of nature” into our hands. For some grape varieties the juice yield was slightly below that of the previous year (partly due to the extremely small berries), but because the skin contained two thirds of the aroma precursors of the grapes, you would imagine that it made our winemaker hearts skip a beat.
The Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc were next. Here too we had fantastic grapes and good yields. A real piece of art on the vine! We are already eagerly looking forward to the magnificent 2020 cuvée of Weißburgunder & Chardonnay.
Equally, the Silvaner – the original grape variety of the Rhinehessen – is of great quality, even if it yielded significantly lower quantities than in 2019. Scheurebe and Rieslaner are both to die for in 2020, with small, thick-skinned, highly aromatic berries!
Finally, we started picking the Riesling. We simply cannot remember ever harvesting such beautiful Kabinett grapes. Here in Germany, the lightweight Kabinett is enjoying increasing popularity. Already, numerous other wine colleagues smile enthusiastically when talking about Kabinett. Our Limestone has a fine scent of peach and a wonderful mineral lift. The Schubertslay Kabinetts have an intense note of slate; they are classy and already show an incredible elegance. Kabinett at its best!
During the end of September and the start of October 2020, we once again picked the best plots for the harvest of our Riesling “von der Fels” and the Große Gewächs, similar to general timeframe of vintage 2019. We particularly enjoyed the last third of the 2020 harvest. The weather stayed stable and pleasant, the grapes presented themselves like perfectly showcased gemstones at the jeweller, so much so that we were almost sorry to pick them. There was no sun damage, no rot… just perfectly harvested grapes for superb dry Rieslings.
The yields from the Hipping and Pettenthal vineyards, further north in Nierstein, were very small. The grapes were thin-skinned, intensely aromatic and had a very stable acidity. In the rolling hills near our home in Dalsheim, we had more rain in August and September and therefore very good yields of between 25 and 40hl/ha from the best plots.
As in 2019, Morstein and Abtserde benefitted from the subterranean sources of water. There was no issue with drought stress at all, the grapes were strong and healthy.
In the Kirchspiel, only the grapes from the old plots planted in 1964 and 1966 were suitable to make Große Gewächs, the Grand Crus. This year, in addition to the “von der Fels,” we´ll also have a sensational plot from the Abtserde and a herbaceous spicy, minerally cask from the Kirchspiel.
A year of fantastic quality, not only for the GGs, but also once again for our Riesling “von der Fels.”
In August and September of 2020, we had more rainfall in Dalsheim than in Westhofen (a neighbouring village, where Julia is from, roughly five miles away) and accordingly in October the two Grand Cru sites in Dalsheim, Hubacker and Frauenberg, had a grape foliage that was immensely lush and green. We hand-picked ten individual plots in the “Oberer Hubacker” (the upper Hubacker), the finest and most complex casks of which became Grosse Gewächs.
From the Frauenberg, traditionally the latest and coolest location in Dalsheim due to its exposure to wind and its elevation, we had yields of 30 hl/ha of outstanding quality. The aromas and structure in the 2020 bottling is even more profound and complex than in its debut year in 2019.
Good wine is all about teamwork. We thank everyone who has supported us.
We wanted to offer a most heartfelt thank you to all our co-workers and friends who have supported us throughout the year. It gives us such pleasure to work with you. You are the soul of our winery and without you, even the best generous provisions of Nature would not be enough for wines such as these. Special praise in this vintage goes to our son Felix – the 10th Keller generation – who is virtually unstoppable in his youthful drive. His energy and love of wine motivates and enriches the whole team. We want to offer you a big thank you as well, our wine friends. Close personal contact with many of you is very important to us. Many thanks for the numerous nice conversations, emails and letters, the home-made jam, the home-baked biscuits, the hand-made chocolates and the liquid Christmas presents! We often think about such things as we put our life and soul into the vineyard, to get the very best into the bottle for you and for us. A great big thank you on behalf of the whole team!
– Klaus Peter and Julia Keller