2021 Peter Lauer Ayler Riesling Faß 6 Senior

WINEMAKER: Florian Lauer
REGION: Saar, GER
VARIETAL: Riesling
VITICULTURE: Organic

Lauer ‘Senior’ is Florian’s nod to making a style of wine his grandfather (Peter Lauer Sr.) would enjoy. His aim is to make a feinherb, weeknight wine from 70-year-old, ungrafted vines on the Kupp. The 2021er Ayler Riesling “Senior” N°6 is a off-dry wine (with 14 g/l of residual sugar) made from fruit harvested from the original Kupp hill on a west-facing section towards Wawern. It offers a rather undercooled nose made of gooseberry, whipped cream, grapefruit zest, floral elements, and lots of backward feeling smoke and slate. The wine is impeccably balanced on the palate. Here, orchard fruits interplay with fine spices and herbal elements. A great sense of zest provides the right counterpart to balance out the slight creaminess in the finish. The aftertaste is all about black berried fruits, mirabelle, and smoke.

For purists, there is nothing like the Saar. Saar shows intensity without weight, grandiosity without size: rocks and acidity. Frank Schoonmaker put it best in his 1956 tome The Wines of Germany: “In these great and exceedingly rare wines of the Saar, there is a combination of qualities which I can perhaps best describe as indescribable – austerity coupled with delicacy and extreme finesse, an incomparable bouquet, a clean, very attractive hardness tempered by a wealth of fruit and flavor which is overwhelming.” Yes, this is the Saar. Peter Lauer, founded in 1830, is currently one of greatest estates in this sacred place.

The style at Lauer is quite the opposite of his famous Saar neighbours, Egon Müller and Hanno Zilliken – the focus at Lauer is for dry and off-dry Rieslings bottled from single sites, identified by their cask number, as opposed to the Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese wines of the latter two made using the German Prädikat System. Yet the hallmarks are similar: purity, precision, intensity, minerality.

Florian is a minimalist in their cellar. The only interventions are temperature control, a clarification prior to fermentation and battonage (stirring of the lees). The grapes ferment spontaneously with native yeast. Lees contact is allowed as well as some partial malolactic fermentation. As he describes it, "I don't look for malo but I don't avoid try to avoid it. It just happens in parallel." This approach takes the edge out of the acidity, and if done with care, doesn’t add simplifying lactic notes. The end results are undeniable: depth, texture, dimension, and clarity.