Karsten Peter named Winemaker of the year

“The moving backstories of Karsten Peter, a native of the Pfalz region, and of the former Royal Prussian Wine Domain founded in 1901 cannot be told properly in just a couple of paragraphs. The long version can be read in the estate’s  comprehensive chronicle and some other wine books, however, in order to fully understand why the estate and winemaker deserve this accolade you must taste the exceptional wines they made from the 2015 vintage. Certainly some readers will find them too intense and/or demanding, and that’s their right. However, the goal of this prize is not to praise standardized, easy drinking wines. Rather, it is to recognize winemakers who perfect very particular types of wine.

Since 2010 when he was named winemaker and director of the estate by the new owner Jens Reidel, Karsten Peter worked untiringly on the realization of a contemporary interpretation of the great tradition of the former Royal Prussian Domain. Already the first vintage (certainly not an easy one!) was very successful, but during the following vintages the wines became better in leaps and bounds. The 2015 “Vom Schiefer” from vineyards in Neiderhausen, and the somewhat suppler version, and the more radical 2015 “Vom Vulkan” from vineyards in Schlossböckelheim (both Euro 14.50 direct from the winery) impressively demonstrate what “racy” and “mineral” mean in dry Riesling. They offer an enormous amount of original character for a very friendly price. The even more exciting Riesling “Steinterrassen” (Euro 19,90) and the “GGs” (from Euro 26) from the last vintages deserve even fuller attention.

Rightly, Karsten Peter who just turned 40, would point to the exceptional vineyard sites (most importantly the monopole Hermannsberg and the Kupfergrube, of which the estate owns the majority) as the wellspring of this exceptional quality. However, he’s the one who tickles all this expression out of the vineyards and makes it shine in the wines, and for that he is named Winemaker of the Year.”