Over the last decade a young grower has skyrocketed to the very top of German winemaking: Klaus-Peter Keller.

In 2002, the dynamic Keller took over his family’s Rheinhessen estate, inheriting vineyards famed as early as the Middle Ages. Under his father, the estate had been best known for traditional off-dry wines, but in less than a decade, Klaus-Peter made it arguably Germany’s greatest estate for dry Riesling.

What Keller has done is recognize the magic of the soils in his Grosses Gewächs (“Grand Cru”) vineyards for creating profound dry Rieslings. These are terroirs which, as John Gilman has written, “recall the Trimbach family’s great Clos Ste. Hune vineyard more than they do the slate of the Mosel.”

These sites—Kirchspiel, Abtserde, Morstein and Hubacker—are blessed with a chalky clay marl ideal for producing intensely mineral Riesling.

Add to this Keller’s genius in the cellar. Not only had he received perfectionist technical training at Geisenheim, he worked at both Armand Rousseau and Hubert Lignier in Burgundy. No surprise his trocken Rieslings offer such extraordinary minerality, depth and elegance!

From Scarcity Comes a Bargain

But Keller’s iconic international stature has resulted in both high prices and scarcity for his top wines—the single-vineyard, Grosses Gewächs bottlings. There is simply not enough of these coveted wines to go around, and prices have gone up and up.

Because Keller typically only uses about 20% of each vineyard’s production in the single-vineyard bottlings, he needed to find a home for all the Grosses Gewächs wine not used. So, he created his stunning von der Fels—“of the rocks”—Riesling.

The 2012 von der Fels is the finest version to date, thanks to a fantastic growing season and the inclusion of even more juice from Grosses Gewächs vineyards Abtserde and Morstein than usual.

It’s all here: Germany’s genius of trocken Riesling in a top vintage in a wine of stunning complexity and ageworthiness.

Not to be missed!