2025 Peter Lauer Riesling "No. 6 Senior", Saar, Germany
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ABOUT THIS WINE
The wine is called “Senior” as a tribute to Florian’s grandfather who was already in the 1950s famous at least in the Saar Valley for his dry Riesling. So the story goes, he would walk through the cellar and taste all the barrels and then write “Senior” on the cask he wanted for his own drinking. Nine times out of ten, the cask he took was good ole “Fass, or barrel, #6,” sourced from parcels in the western-most part of the Kupp (to the left of the Kern site if you look at the Lauer Grand Cru map, available in the gallery to the left). This is one of the cooler parcels, farthest away from the moderating influence of the Saar River. As it happens, this wine nearly always ferments to a precarious, near-impossible-to-describe balance, in this gray area that is not at all sweet, but not legally dry either. I refer to this style of wine as “dry tasting.” In the old days, “dry” Saar wines often needed a little bit of residual sugar, not to make them taste fruity, but to just counter the ferocious acidities. So this is “Senior” not only named after Florian’s grandfather, but after an old-school style of wines common for the Saar. And while it is fashionable now to do natural ferments, and to seek a more natural balance for Rieslings, the Lauers are famous because they have been doing it for centuries, before it was in vogue. Crafted from 70+ year old vines in the prestigious Ayler Kupp grand cru vineyard.
ABOUT THIS PRODUCER
For purists, there is nothing like the Saar. The magic here is intensity without weight, grandiosity without size: rocks and acidity. Lauer is currently one of greatest estates in this sacred place. The style here is 180 degrees removed from his famous neighbors Egon Müller and Zilliken. The focus here is on dry and dry-tasting Riesling. While the source of most of the bottlings is the famed Ayler Kupp, Florian uses the pre-1971 vineyard names – Neuenberg, Stirn, Unterstenberg. Rigorous vineyard work, indigenous yeasts and spontaneous fermentations mean the wines find their own balance. The results are undeniable: depth, texture, dimension, clarity, cut. For Lauer, the large site of the Ayler Kupp has many different terroirs rather than a single, defining character. Soil composition, exposition, altitude, and microclimate in combination with vine age all make contributions to the individual character of each wine.