2021 Keller Riesling G-Max

The cool and smoky nose makes this sleek and vibrant, medium-bodied dry riesling compellingly attractive. Sensational mineral freshness and limey acidity are almost perfectly interwoven with the still youthful stone-fruit character. Incredibly long, stony finish. Made for the long-term, but already delicious. Drink or hold. At the Keller G-Max vertical tasting.

The 2021 Riesling G-Max is another highlight of the history of this mysterious wine. Cool, citrusy, taut and fresh on the nose, with rocky notes and a concentrated but elegant Riesling and yellow stone fruit aroma, this is a juicy, zesty and taut dry Riesling form a coolish and rainier vegetation period. The wine reveals a concentrated core and well-integrated mineral acidity. The 2021 is slender, very fine and enormously animating G-Max that I tasted blind as wine number 21 of the G-Max vertical at Steinheuer's Restaurant Zur Alten Post, Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, in January 2024.

With basil, gentian, juniper berry, coriander seed, white peach and lime, this is another Keller Riesling of its vintage whose ravishing aromatic display is distillate-like in its forcefulness and high-toned aura. The feel is flatteringly glossy, and the inner-mouth impression of implosive density as well as underlying stoniness prove entirely compatible with a sense of buoyancy and refreshingly bright, sheer juiciness. The mouth-shaking finish displays striking transparency to a kaleidoscopic array of herbal, floral, fruity and mineral elements. (As with the Hipping Grosses Gewächs in this collection, I feel it necessary to point out why I don’t quantify a “drinking window” that begins in some as yet far-off year. If you could just abstract from the near-impossibility of securing for yourself a single bottle of this wine, then you would feel no compunction after pulling the cork today, as the experience would be enormously gratifying and exciting.)