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In my experience, wine professionals are extremely generous. Wine is all about sharing, after all, and drinking it alone can be a pretty miserable (or disconcerting) experience.
Asked to donate to a charity auction, for example, wine producers and collectors tend to rally round. But there is another rather brilliant way of helping others. German superstar wine producers Klaus Peter (KP) and Julia Keller have dreamt up a way of being altruistic that could be copied by any wine producer, at minimal cost.
From a standing start, on the family estate in Rheinhessen in 2001, the Kellers have gone on to make Germany’s most sought-after dry Riesling, G-Max, and the country’s most expensive Pinot Noir. Their sons Felix and Max are following in their footsteps, and the family now also oversees demanding vineyards in the Mosel, as well as in Norway. They’re also particularly outward-looking, always visiting other producers and posting news of promising younger producers online. Their homely winery in Flörsheim-Dalsheim has trained many of them.
In spring 2020, as the pandemic threatened the financial health of less-established producers, the Kellers’ US importer Stephen Bitterolf suggested that KP put together a selection of wines from some of these gifted young German vintners. He agreed immediately.
When Keller’s six-pack selection went on sale in October 2020, Bitterolf explained on his website how the wines were chosen: “[Keller] has called this new generation of young growers ‘the golden generation’. We quickly agreed on some basic guidelines for the selection. The growers had to be young. They had to be unknown (at least in the US) . . . Once all this was settled, KP texted me the exact bottlings . . . It was as if he had been curating this six-pack in his head for a while.”
This year, Howard Ripley, a specialist importer of German wine in the UK, has followed suit. For the bargain price of £135, it is selling six-packs selected by Keller. Fine German wines are still, in my opinion, underpriced compared with their French counterparts.
According to Sebastian Thomas of Howard Ripley, the Keller selection has already been one of its most successful single-case offers ever. “I feel we are on the edge of a breakthrough,” he says. “I know people have been saying that since the 1990s, but thanks in part to climate change, the reliability and quality of German wines make them much more accessible to consumers. There has been greatly increased interest in dry wines, especially reds, and we are taking on new growers every year.”
The red wine revolution in Germany is real. Warmer summers and mastery of oak have transformed German reds from pale greyish pinks tasting of ash to serious rivals to red burgundy. Spätburgunder, the German name for Pinot Noir, was planted on 11.3 per cent of German vineyards in 2020, whereas in 1995 it represented less than 7 per cent. Spätburgunder vines continue to go into the ground, including on sites that would have been unthinkably cool until recently.
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One of the young producers included in the American case was the talented Philipp Wöhrwag of Müller-Ruprecht in the Pfalz region, which is a hotbed of young wine talent. I caught up with him at a recent London tasting organised by Keeling Andrew, the UK import company run by the team behind Noble Rot restaurants and magazine. Wöhrwag’s Saumagen N Riesling 2019 was included in the Keller selection sold in the US but excluded from the UK case because his wines are now being imported by Keeling Andrew. Yet he was unstinting in his praise for this initiative. “It’s so intelligent,” he says.
Thomas agrees. “It is indeed a notable thing for a country’s leading winemaker to be so encouraging of the younger generation when he has no skin in the game. But Klaus Peter has done more in this century to draw focus on German wine than anyone, so it is no surprise that he is so generous with his time and advice.”
According to Bitterolf, “When you get someone who has no financial stake in any of this (and even, you could argue, would have a financial incentive not to focus on any estate other than their own) and they make the heartfelt appeal, it changes the ballgame completely. One quickly gets the sense that KP feels a responsibility, a duty to help the growers around him — to try and take the white-hot spotlight that is on him and redirect it to the larger culture of German wine.”
The Kellers’ knowledge of the young guns goes beyond just tasting their produce and their praise is generous and genuine. KP says of Peter Leipold in Franken that he “is on the way to becoming a young genius. He worked for two years here at our winery before leaving for Liger-Belair [in Burgundy]. He has a special feeling for wine, something you don’t learn at school. His Pinots are one of the best-kept German Pinot secrets.”
The initial impetus for this initiative, Covid-19, may have passed, but I’d love to see established wine producers all over the world follow in the Kellers’ footsteps, especially as it is so difficult for the many new names to gain a foothold in the wine market. The next generation and relevant importers would make a bit of money. All of us wine lovers would appreciate the expert opinions of those we already admire. And there would be a beneficial halo effect for the curators. What’s not to like?
Wines in the ‘golden generation’
Locations of these rising stars are in brackets. Six bottles for £135 from Howard Ripley, including delivery in England or Wales
WHITES
Achenbach, Porphyr Riesling 2020 Rheinhessen (Wonsheim) 12.5%
F E Huff, Schwabsburger Riesling 2020 Rheinhessen (Nierstein) 12.5%
Seehof, Westhofen Scheurebe 2020 Rheinhessen (Westhofen) 12.5%
REDS
Mertz, Steinalt Portugieser 2019 Franken (Eckelsheim) 13.5%
Giegerich, Pitztaler Berg Spätburgunder 2018 Franken (Grosswallstadt) 13%
Leipold, Obervolkacher Spätburgunder 2017 Franken (Volkach) 13%
Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. More stockists from Wine-searcher.com
Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson
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