source | material 023 - Leipold Grand Cru Franconia

This offer represents almost every reason why we started source | material. First it is an amazing young grower working in an under-represented region in the U.S. with two under-appreciated grapes (Pinot from Germany specifically). Moreover he was recommended to us by Klaus-Peter Keller which is exactly the type of recommendations we were hoping to leverage given all of our deep relationships in Germany.

Beyond these wines are incredible. Peter’s mid-level Silvaner and entry level Pinot are two of my wines of the year. And these are his Grand Crus! I went deep on both for my own cellar.

Please email us at orders@sourcematerialwine.com if you have questions, would like to order or just want to be on our email list for future offers and Rieslingstudy events.

{source|material}

offer 023 - Leipold - Grand Cru Franconia

“Peter’s wines touch my heart.”-KP Keller
2019 Leipold Silvaner Gässberg “Grand Cru” - $35
2019 Leipold Pinot Noir “Grand Cru” - $50
order

Please forgive the blatantly salesy introduction, using one of the most famous winemakers in the world to provide a hook into a new, younger grower. I’ll try and rationalize my actions after you read the quote.

Klaus Peter Keller writes: “For me, Peter Leipold is on the way to becoming a young genius… He worked for two years here at our winery before leaving for Liger-Belair. He has a special feeling for wine, something you don’t learn at school. His Silvaners are great, soil-driven wines that evaporate in the glass - his Pinots are one of the best kept German Pinot secrets. They are pure, precise and utterly delicious. What Peter does with Pinot and Silvaner in Franconia reminds me of what Julian Haart is doing in the Mosel… Peter’s wines touch my heart.”

If you’re going to recklessly jump into one of our offers, this is the one.

The two bottlings on offer are both of Peter’s top wines, one Silvaner and one Pinot Noir. These are his rare “Grand Cru” wines and to grab a bottle of each will cost you less than a single bottle of serious village-level Burgundy. Just reply to this email or contact us at orders@sourcematerialwine.com.

As there is no easy one-liner to contextualize what Leipold is doing, perhaps it’s best to just go right to the wines. If you care about fresh, soil-driven Pinot Noir with rigor and form, you will be blown away by these wines.

If you care about deep, mineral white wines with form and rigor - Chablis is the easiest comparative reference - Peter’s Silvaner will simply be a game changer. In one way, it’s as simple as that.

Leipold’s wines were featured in our SM offer 002, Keller’s “Golden Generation.” They were among the most talked about wines of the collection. People - including myself and @soilpimp - literally freaked out. It’s just rare to have a grower, so young, just emerge, with such a developed style, with such mature and self-confident wines.

In that way, Keller’s reference to Julian Haart is even more appropriate: Julian too simply emerged as a force to reckon with, nearly from day one.

The difference - and this is me rationalizing my heavy lean into Keller’s quote - is that Julian is in the Mosel, in one of the most famous regions on earth, working with Riesling, one of the most famous grapes on earth. There is a fairly well-developed context for these wines.

This is decidedly not the case with Peter. Leipold is working largely with Silvaner (which few people really understand) in Franconia (which few people really understand).

Franconia is a broad swath of land due east of Frankfurt, roughly following the Main river as it twists and turns to and through the most famous city in Franconia, Würzburg. It is a wildly diverse region (in terms of wine styles, grapes, soil-types, microclimates) with a very complicated history; there is simply no easy narrative here.

Well, no easy narrative except this: Franconia is one of the most exciting, most dynamic wine regions in Germany right now, period.

There is a whole new generation of young growers in Franconia that are wildly motivated. The region still has the coolness to shape wines of simply mind-bending rigor and finesse. There is a deep culture here of very dry wines. There is a good amount of limestone. There are a thousand other tiny but important details and they all point in the same direction: Franconia is about to explode onto the world’s wine map. The “Silvaner Revolution” that we talk about, half-jokingly, is only one part of the story. The Pinots, Chardonnays, Weissburgunders and, yes, Rieslings, can be revelations.

When you travel through Germany, there is just this quiet, general admission when you talk to people who really know German wines (Keller being only the most famous of them): this region is due for some serious recognition.

And I think it’s going to happen faster than you think. In five years, my sense is that the names we are just beginning to hear, that we will hear in the coming years, well… many of these wines will go from unknown to allocated in very short order.

But let’s see. Five years? 2026 isn’t that far away - we’ll check back in then and reference this email. Let’s see if it seems outlandish looking back.

For now, Peter’s wines are worth the leap of faith.

We’ve provided more information on the wines below. As always, if you have any questions at all, just email us.

Thank you so much for the support.

2019 Leipold Silvaner Gässberg “Grand Cru” $35
I was introduced to Peter’s wines through KP during the pandemic. It’s a strange way to learn about anything, let alone wine, removed from the person, the place… just tasting the wine(s) alone in your kitchen. During the height of the pandemic I had cases of samples stacked in my cellar - it was work every night to get through 2-4 bottles. But I still remember tasting Peter’s wines for the first time. Two words echoed in my head: saturation and evaporation. Peter’s Silvaners especially are incisive; they are like a thousand nano-arrows of limestone fired into your palate, the sensation is deep and bracing. The wines are immediate, tactile. There are a thousand explosions of flavor, from yellow fruit to flower and mineral - yet the best of his wines are airy too. They seem to levitate. If the energy of the wine reverberates for quite some time - the weight does not. The 2019 Gässberg Silvaner is Peter’s most mineral, most linear Silvaner. Yet the 2019 is a profound vintage in Germany; the Gässberg is deep and melon-fruited, rich almost, though woven with mineral and herbs. The tension, the contrast, is what makes this wine so beguiling - Baroque minimalism. This wine is just superb and will cellar and benefit from 5+.

2019 Leipold Pinot Noir “Grand Cru” $50
I was introduced to Peter’s wines through KP during the pandemic. It’s a strange way to learn about anything, let alone wine, removed from the person, the place… just tasting the wine(s) alone in your kitchen. During the height of the pandemic I had cases of samples stacked in my cellar - it was work every night to get through 2-4 bottles. But I still remember tasting Peter’s wines - two words reverberated in my head: saturation and evaporation. Peter’s Pinot Noirs - no - THIS Pinot Noir, flaunts the same push-pull as the Silvaner - both restraint, fine-ness, extreme detail, yet also lavishness. This takes 30 minutes to an hour to unfold, but after it does it is dark-fruited, brambly and herbal. It is saturating, flavorful, yet feels airy and lifted, curvy and generous yet with a graceful form. This too could use a few years of cellar rest, yet if you open now, let it breathe for 30 minutes to an hour.