2010 Dalsheimer Burgel Spatburgunder Trocken GG

Assembled in March and bottled in July of last year, Keller's 2010 Dalsheimer Burgel Spatburgunder Grosses Gewachs leads with scents and bright juiciness of sour cherry and red currant tinged with sumac, fruit pit, and toasted oak. Sappy and penetrating if athletically lean - even a bit spare, as well as almost piercing in its combination of fresh fruit acidity and cyanic piquancy - this certainly bespeaks its author's emphasis on purity of fruit, levity, and what he is happy to call "red Riesling" character. Pronounced salinity adds to the saliva-stimulating length of this strikingly vivacious Pinot, and its bitter elements to a sense of grip. I can imagine it being worth following for a decade or more, but as I have written before, Keller's evolution as a Pinot Noir grower has been too rapid for a relevant track record in bottle to have accumulated. (I have not tasted the corresponding "S" Pinot - representing Keller's larger assemblage - from 2010.) I would however be inclined to wait 2-3 years before really tucking into any precious bottles. 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