klaus peter keller’s coming!
By
Visiting Winegrower!
Klaus Peter Keller (above) will be visiting our New York Store on
Friday, January 25th
6 – 9 PM
33 E. 20th Street
New York, NY, 10003
866-986-6673
FREE TASTING
(bring your friends)
When Steffi Weegmüller introduced me to Klaus-Peter Keller in 2001, he and his wife Julia (protegée of Hans-Günther Schwarz) had just taken over operations at Weingut Keller in Flörsheim-Dalsheim, which his father had already established as one of the leading producers in the Rheinheßen.
Klaus Keller’s improbably excellent wines first attracted international attention in the early 1980s, despite coming from the “backwoods” Hügelland in the Rheinheßen, a mixed agricultural area that is best known for Liebfraumilch and other horrors.
Today “KP” is recognized as one of the best wine growers in Germany, and the Keller wines include the most sought-after dry Rieslings in the world.
Here’s what we’ll be tasting:
Grüner Silvaner trocken ’06
Riesling trocken ’06
Riesling trocken “von der Fels” ’06
Riesling “Limestone” ’06
Riesling Westhovener Kirchspiel Großes Gewächs ’06
Riesling Dalsheimer Hubacker Großes Gewächs ’06
Riesling Westhovener Kirchspiel Auslese ’06
And with our usual, complete respect for our customers, these are NOT the cooked, grey-market wines that sometime “make the rounds” in New York.
These, like all Moore Brothers wines, were picked up at the winery in a refrigerated truck, shipped in refrigerated container, and always housed and transported under perfect temperature and humidity-controlled conditions.
Welcome to the real thing.
Grey-market wines come from distributors who fail to sell wine that is allocated to them in the market authorized by the producer. So they dump them at cost or below in another market, typically where the producer already has an authorized distributor. The result is that retailers who buy in this “grey-market” can sometimes offer hard-to-find wines at lower prices than retailers who buy through the channels authorized by the producer. Lower prices for consumers always sounds great, but not if the wines are beat up. They may be fine for label-hunters, but they aren’t for consumers who want to drink them.
The grey-market disrupts orderly distribution and is patently unfair to the authorized distributor where the wines are dumped. Further, it undermines the intention of great producers like Keller who want to be assured that their wines are sold in perfect condition, and so authorize distribution like ours that takes good care them.
We've recently seen grey-market Keller wine offered by another New York retailer at prices slightly lower than ours. But Klaus-Peter isn’t going to be there on Friday, he’s going to be at Moore Brothers.
My advice is, look for the “Fleet Street” back label on Keller wine in New York. It’s your best guarantee that you have the real thing, and it’s guaranteed fresh, only at Moore Brothers.
And sorry, G-Max ’06 is long sold out. Keller allocates 1 G-Max for every 100 Großes Gewächs. However, there will be a little available in the ’07 vintage (which, by the way, may be the best vintage ever for this wine).
Sounds great, Greg! Any G-max perhaps?
Could you elaborate on what are cooked, gray-market wines and how they “make the rounds” in NYC?