Riesling Hipping QBA, Weingut Keller 2015

Like its Pettenthal counterpart, this bottling from the old former Franz Karl Schmitt vines in Niersteiner Flächenhahl was picked early, before the cold snap, and was allowed to finish legally halbtrocken (in this case, with 17 grams of residual sugar). Its density is accompanied by infectious primary juiciness of lime, orange and white peach, as well as a welcome and surprising sense of transparency and lift, in all of those respects far surpassing the corresponding Pettenthal. Quinine, smoky black tea, cooling green herbs and crushed stone add fascination to a finish of ravishingly nuanced complexity and extraordinarily sheer persistence.