Keller - Feuervogel Sylvaner 2020
We are drinking a bottle of Silvaner Feuervogel 2020 from Weingut Keller in Rheinhessen.
At the latest, when you try Silvaner with a winemaker at a winery in Rheinhessen or at some event and strike up a conversation, you’ll hear that Rheinhessen is the largest Silvaner-growing region in Germany. And because no other area outside Germany grows Silvaner to any significant extent, you casually also pick up the title of world champion in terms of Silvaner acreage. And that even though the relative vineyard area planted to Silvaner has crashed from over 60% a hundred years ago to well below a tenth. In absolute terms, though, we’re of course still talking about quite a lot of vines. We’ve already talked about this when having Bischel. One of the bottlings you see from time to time is certainly Feuervogel from Klaus Peter Keller. In this case today, the 2020 vintage. I don’t follow the estate’s portfolio in great detail, given how hard it is to get hold of the wines at all and the prices, but I think there are now three Silvaners with the odd special bottling as Reserve or as an Ortswein here and there: the entry level, above that Feuervogel, and by now Am Austernfels on top of that from a parcel with, as expected, lots of oysters in the soil as Auster is oyster in German. Still, Weingut Keller is of course mainly known for its Rieslings, then probably for Pinot, and then, yes, then perhaps the Silvaner. Or rather Sylvaner, that’s how it’s written on the bottle.
To get a question that will come up anyway out of the way: this bottle cost me 32 bucks, the ex-cellar price at the time. It’s probably more now, but even a few years ago that already had you operating in the very top price range of what you have to pay for Silvaner in Rheinhessen. The vines for Feuervogel grow on limestone rock and Muschelkalk soils. The wine spends a short time on the skins before pressing, including stems and stalks. It is then matured in large wooden casks.
At the start there’s nothing but structure and acidity. It’s actually a bit stressful to drink, so we give the wine a few hours to unlock the door a bit. That helps. Now I’d file this under “typical Silvaner”. There’s hay, some yellow fruit, rather discreet, not intrusive, a bit of flint, and that kind of vegetal, plant-like note that Silvaner often has. Not spectacular, yet still the sort of thing that makes you keep wanting to smell again to see how it smells now. It doesn’t shout at you, and there’s nothing that would make you cry out yourself at first. But you take a small sip, smell, smell again, another sip. It has depth, complexity, and is somehow fascinating after all. So maybe it is a spectacle in the end. A very quiet one, anyway. Because what the wine does in the subconscious, what remains on the tongue, the way you want to pull and roll your tongue after each sip, that’s so good. And at the same time a bit overly intellectual maybe.
Day two is more open. To a degree, at least. There’s more fruit, which at the same time seems even yellower. Riper. Spice and stone still set the tone. The acidity has become fruitier, juicier, and somehow softer. You’re briefly tempted to say creamier, but it isn’t really creamy. Creamier than yesterday, though, and overall more like a key lime tart and less like pudding. It’s clear, straight-forward, with lime, lemon and behind that you start to notice that the wine has been in bottle for a while. The way the spice feels, what lingers, that only happens after a few years. And with the wine on the tongue, the nose also becomes fruitier: more pome fruit, mellow pome fruit, more citrus. It’s still really good. Today, though, it’s no longer so intellectual, but somehow also just plain delicious.