2023 Peter Lauer Ayler Riesling Faß 6 Senior

WINEMAKER: Florian Lauer
REGION: Mosel, GER
VARIETY: 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 2023er Ayler Riesling “Senior” N°6 is an off-dry wine made from fruit harvested from the original Kupp hill on a west-facing section towards Wawern. Initially still slightly reductive, this offers an aromatic and appealing nose of candied lime, grapefruit zest, herbal tea, greengage, dried white flowers, and spices. The wine proves delicately playful and smooth on the nicely juicy and animating palate. The finish is nicely clean and long with a fine spicy touch. The after-taste proves light and refined. This barely off-dry yet superbly juicy Riesling is always very good indeed and especially this year.

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.

Florian Lauer is today making some of the best Riesling in Germany from his vines around the Saar town of Ayl. 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.