2024 Keller "Limestone" Riesling

Weingut Keller's 2024 "Limestone" Riesling is grown on twenty-year-old vines in Germany's Rheinhessen, the region Klaus-Peter Keller almost single-handedly dragged from obscurity into the top tier of German Riesling addresses. This bottle sits in a Feinherb style — lightly off-dry with the kind of dry extract and electric acidity that define Keller's grand cru bottlings, scaled down to an everyday price. The estate sources these grapes from limestone-rich soils that give the wine its name and its lifted, mineral core, a hallmark of the Rheinhessen's best sites under Keller's direction. Klaus-Peter Keller took over the family estate in the 1990s and began isolating parcels with the limestone bedrock that yields Riesling with unusual tension and aging potential. While Keller's single-vineyard wines — Hubacker, Abtserde, Morstein — command collector prices, the "Limestone" draws from younger estate fruit across several sites, all on the same calcaire substrate. Fermentation is slow and cool in stainless steel to preserve the high-toned aromatics, and the wine sees no wood, so the pineapple, quince, and green apple notes land bright and unfiltered. The result is a wine that tastes like Keller's top tier in miniature, with all the clarity and none of the formality. In the glass it pours pale gold, almost crystalline, and opens with a perfume of citrus peel, tart pineapple, and quince paste before shifting to lemon candy and ripe tropical fruit on the palate. The acidity is very high — this is not a soft, honeyed Riesling but one that dances and lifts, with a long, saline finish that keeps you coming back. It's featherweight and precise, the kind of Kabinett-adjacent bottling that pairs beautifully with roast chicken, trout almondine, or raw oysters, and it drinks well young but rewards three to four years in the cellar if you can wait. Open it with spicy Thai curries or anything involving citrus and herbs, and watch it cut through fat and amplify spice without overwhelming the dish. Available for pickup at our Lincoln Park bottle shop at 1128 W Armitage Ave, local Chicago delivery, or nationwide shipping.