Peter Lauer Riesling No. 3 Ayler Feinherb 2022

About the wine:

Part of the estate’s tradition is to use “fass,” or barrel, numbers as part of the identifier of each wine in addition to the vineyard name. Thus you have a wine such as “Unterstenberg – Fass 12.” The alignment of the vineyard site and the barrel may assist the natural-yeast fermentation, creating similar populations of yeasts in both environments. That said, the estate has grown over the last few decades and not all wines are always matched to the same barrel.

The 2021 Ayler Riesling N°4 is a fully off-dry wine (with 33 g/l of residual sugar) made from fruit harvested from the Scheidterberg and Sonnenberg side hills. It offers a rather undercooled nose made of fern, herbs, vineyard peach, mirabelle, earthy spices, and smoky elements. The wine reveals more of the green herbs on the palate. Far from disturbing, they add freshness to the beautifully mouthwatering palate. The finish is still slightly firm and beautifully zesty.

About the producer:

For purists, there is nothing like the Saar. It is arguably one of the greatest, most unique wine-growing regions on earth. The core of greatness in the Saar is intensity without weight, grandiosity without size. 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 and Florian Lauer is currently one of the greatest winemakers in this sacred place.

Florian’s general style is exactly the opposite of his famous Saar neighbor Egon Müller. At Lauer, the focus is on dry-tasting Rieslings as opposed to the residual sugar wines of the latter. For this style, there are really only two addresses in the Saar (though more come online every year, trying to chase the style): Lauer and Hofgut Falkenstein.

Employing natural-yeast fermentations, Lauer’s wines find their own balance. They tend to be more textural, deeper and more masculine. They have a preternatural sense of balance, an energy that is singular. Yet the hallmarks of the Saar are there: purity, precision, rigor, mineral.