Keller Riesling G-Max 2011

98 points John Gilman (View From the Cellar): "As my bottle of 2011 G-Max was still in good a friend’s cellar in Germany, I had this wine on my first evening there at the start of my May trip to the wine country. He generously suggested that we pair it up with a bottle of 2011 Morstein out of his cellar (he is a passionate collector of Weingut Keller wines and the gentleman who first introduced me to the family’s wines back when I was first starting the newsletter) and my May visit was off to a stupendous start! The 2011 G-Max is a brilliant wine and was quite a bit less evolved than the 2011 Morstein paired up with it on this evening, offering up a youthfully complex and utterly refined bouquet of pink grapefruit, tart orange, an exotic hint of guava, a delicate touch of wild yeasts, stunningly pure and complex limestone minerality, a dollop of petrol and a beautiful topnote of citrus blossoms. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, racy and still quite tightly-knit, with a rock solid core, laser-like focus and great cut and grip on the very, very long and hauntingly refined finish. This is a very, very elegant vintage of G-Max and my score will probably prove to be conservative when the wine has fully blossomed! 2023-2060. (May/Jun 2018)"

96 points Mosel Fine Wines: "AP: 56 12. The 2011er G-Max delivers a quite aromatic and expressive nose blending fine minty and floral elements with riper notes of grapefruit, peach, coco and dried pineapple, all wrapped into some tobacco. The wine is still compact, structured and intense on the palate and leaves a powerful and spicy feel in the minute-long finish. This highly complex dry Riesling is still too young to fully shine, but its sheer complexity and magnificent intensity are really compelling. This will need a couple more years to start to shine. 2021-2041. (Apr 2018)"

95 points David Schildknecht (Wine Advocate): "Keller's 2011 Riesling G-Max is every bit as pithily concentrated as and scarcely less buoyant or energetic than the corresponding Abtserde, with piquant toasted nuts, legume sprouts, crushed stone, peat, iodine, fruit pit and citrus rinds that truly stain the palate. For all of its near-implosive density there is still lift along with torrential primary juiciness here (something I suspect it needs to keep bitterness at bay). I would expect excitement in following it - for the few who are able - over the next dozen or more years (and a bottle that had been open for a day was not less riveting than one freshly-opened). A recent opportunity to review the dozen vintages of Grosse Gewachse for which Klaus Peter Keller has been solely responsible at his family's estate brings home how the virtues of earlier bottlings have undergone clarification and refinement as well as intensification in more recent years, such that any extrapolation from the former to predict how the later will perform in bottle risks failing to do those wines justice. But, by the same token, there are too few wines enough like Keller's most recent G-Max and Abtserde bottlings to do better than speculate on their long-term evolution, let alone to rely on any existing, analogous track record. (Feb 2013)"

95 points Stuart Pigott (JamesSuckling.com): "Deep and complex nose of herbs, licorice, stone fruit and candied citrus. Surprisingly sleek on the medium-bodied palate for the very warm vintage, with a minty freshness. The ample tannins are now beautifully interwoven with the candied-citrus character. At its best. Drink now. At the Keller G-Max vertical tasting. (3/22/24)"

19.5/20 points Michael Schmidt (JancisRobinson.com): "Tasted blind. After the first two, quite ‘sweet-nosed’ wines of this flight (the G-Max 2003 and 2006, it turned out), this third one returns to the traditional virtues of Riesling with aromas of waxy fruit peel, smoky minerality and green herbs. As far as age is concerned this G-Max is hard to place. A fresh vegetal note and tangy citrus nuances seem to point towards a youthful stage, whereas waxy and nutty accents would rather indicate that some development has taken place. Dynamic acidity, crisp juicy fruit and exotic spices set off a crescendo of flavours, which finally unite in a long and generous finish. A paragon of extract and, in its youthful beauty, almost timeless like Oscar Wilde’s picture of Dorian Gray. Drinking Window: 2014-2035. (1/14/18)"