View From The Cellar Sept-Oct 2007 - Keller Wein

Weingut Keller
Renaissance in the Rheinhessen
All Keller photos courtesy of Dr. Markus Strobel.
Of all the major wine-producing regions in Germany, perhaps none has less
luster these days than the Rheinhessen. Throughout the long dark night of commercially
generic German wines that expanded unremittingly during the decades of the sixties and
seventies, the Rheinhessen was best known as the home of the anonymous Liebfraumilch
and an ocean of unremarkable clones that stormed the castle of Riesling plantation in the
region. While several fine sites remained unscathed (many centered around the town of
Nierstein), much of the Rheinhessen was given up as lost to the rather modest jug wines
of the region, mostly produced from the lowly müller-thurgau or silvaner grapes. At the
nadir of quality in the Rheinhessen in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, only five percent of the
region’s vineyards were still planted to riesling. This is a region of mixed agriculture,
with many of the area’s vineyards found on much more gently rolling slopes that recall
Burgundy or the Loire valley, rather than the precipitously steep slate slopes of the
middle Mosel or Rheingau. The only really steep slopes in the Rheinhessen lie along the
Rhine river in the short span between the towns of Nackenheim to the north and
Deinheim in the south, and which includes Nierstein and Oppenheim. This has
traditionally been considered the heart and soul of high quality riesling in the
Rheinhessen for many generations, but things are changing.
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