Franz Keller - Drei Dörfer 2022
We are drinking a bottle of Drei Dörfer 2022 from the Franz Keller winery from the Kaiserstuhl in Baden.
This wine is definitely no longer a hidden gem, considering how often I’ve already seen the bottle. But that doesn’t matter. It’s still new, as 2022 is only the second vintage of the Drei Dörfer Chardonnay being bottled. At Franz Keller winery in the Kaiserstuhl region, almost exclusively Chardonnay or Pinot Noir are now planted for new vineyards. However, it takes a few years before a vine bears any fruit, and even longer before it produces fruit that shows the character of a specific site. So what to do? In this case, the Chardonnay grapes from three different sites in three different villages go together into this wine. Not really hard to guess from the name, which means three villages in German. Here, the vineyards are the Achkarrer Schlossberg, classified as a Grosse Lage by the VDP, the Jechtinger Eichert, Erste Lage, and the Schelinger Ohrberg, which hasn’t been classified yet. As already indicated, the vines are relatively newly planted and grow on volcanic soils in all locations. As usual at Kaiserstuhl. Matching the three villages, three different labels from a three-part painting are attached to the bottles. So anyone who wants the complete set on display can revive that childhood passion for collecting cards. Perhaps a bit more expensive than back then, even young vines and the village wine status don’t help with that. The wine is fermented in small oak barrels and aged for a year, then rests for another six months in tank on the fine lees before being bottled.
First, you have to get past the oak that completely dominates the initial moments, but then gradually steps aside. Behind it follows slightly yellow, rather dark yellow fruit that is beautiful and intense, but honestly not particularly spectacular. At least until you’ve actually tasted it. There too, it starts with woody structure. Then the wine really gains momentum, gripping the tongue with saltiness and stoniness, followed by a fine creaminess and fruit. And while swirling the wine between tongue and palate, it becomes increasingly herbaceous on the nose. Wines that are better to smell than drink have the unbeatable advantage that the glass lasts a very long time. Unfortunately, you can’t rely on that here, because what happens when drinking is nothing less than magnificent. So the inclined drinker must either exercise restraint or simply miss the development over the coming days. Anyone who can appreciate structured wine even remotely will definitely have a lot of fun with this bottle.
We’re quite good at restraint now and plan two more evenings with the wine. Day two is softer than the first evening. But you search in vain for a major change. With such young wines, that’s not particularly surprising. There’s so much reserve in the wine that a few hours of oxygen contact doesn’t really disturb its composure. There’s more fruit now, and the herbaceousness doesn’t have to fight through the oak to reach the nose, it’s immediately present. The salty, structured core is just as good as the day before. I now understand why I’ve seen this bottle pass by me so often.
The plan for the glass on the third evening fails. It was not our fault though, because the train had a different opinion in practice than on the schedule, and we were therefore home much later than actually planned. So the oxygen had one more day to work on the remaining rest. What challenges many leftover sips, the Drei Dörfer endures with composure. Day four smells riper now, the fruit is distinctly more kumquat than yellow. The oak is even further in the background. But there’s no less structure, it now seems to come more from the extract than from the wood. No matter how the aromas have shifted over the last few days, no matter what stands more in the foreground or has stepped further back, the balance and freshness were never gone. You get the feeling that everything can swap places without ever getting in each other’s way. That’s impressive, even more so because the wine is so young. Especially then, you often have an evening of finding phase. Not here. It’s consistently good, and if this can serve as an indicator for the coming years, then my buying finger is twitching quite violently. What a Chardonnay, and one that at least raises the question of whether vines actually need to be old.