2020 Gruner Silvaner Trocken

Greenhouse-like leafiness and cooling green herbs dominate on the nose. These notes then compliment juicy pear fruit on a polished and buoyant mid-palate. The lingering finish is correspondingly wafting, cooling and consummately refreshing while introducing a decided note of chalk. (There’s barely 12% alcohol here.) Incidentally, I owe my luck in being able to taste this to there having been an unsellable bottle with a chipped lip. I was unable to taste the “Feuervogel” version of Silvaner from this vintage. Production is very small, and nowadays, there is nearly as heated a demand as there is for Keller’s Riesling Grosse Gewächse. “Inside of two weeks,” says Keller, “all of our Silvaner is sold out.” But there’s exciting news in this department. Beginning in 2021, there will be a bottling from 60-year-old vines high up by the church in Neu-Bamberg (in the “Rheinhessen Switzerland” familiar from wines of Wagner-Stempel). “You have a layered combination of porphyry and chalk there that may be the geological ideal for Silvaner,” enthuses Keller, “with really striking phenolics. One of our fellow workers brought this parcel to our attention. And because it’s Silvaner, it had been overlooked.”