Peter Lauer - 'Senior - No. 6' - Riesling - Saar, DE - 2023

Notes from the Winery/Importer

This for me is one of the *great* GREAT white wine deals in the world – within the German pantheon it is right there with Keller’s “von der Fels” and Emrich-Schönleber’s “Mineral” as truly Grand Cru wines that sell for 50% of what they probably should. For 2023, the “Senior” is a dry wine (legally Trocken with only ten grams RS), yet the extreme density of the wine and concentration give it a certain polish. Perhaps more than most wines in Lauer’s stable, the 2023 “Senior” is a wine that sits perfectly poised between auster and mineral, and generous and heady, perfumes of stone fruit and citrus. Absolutely spectacular. There’s a story here, so make a quick cup of coffee and sit for a moment. 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. You just have to taste this wine; while it normally ferments to off dry levels, the wine is dry tasting yet textural with amazing depth and clarity. Don’t worry about how dry or not it is – it’s just delicious. Focus on that. In 2021 this wine has 13.7g/l of RS, 8.5g/l of acidity and a moderate 11.5% alcohol.

Notes on the Producer

I keep the quote above largely for sentimental purposes. It was first penned by me, in the summer of 2011, as I was trying to come to terms with the stratospheric rise of Lauer, who was then still a bit of a newbie on the U.S. scene. It’s funny to read now, not even a decade later, as Lauer has been, unquestionably, established as one of the greatest addresses in Germany. 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.

Florian’s playground is the breathtaking hillside of the Kupp, pictured above and to the right. Though the many vineyards of this mountain were unified (obliterated?) under the single name “Kupp” with the 1971 German wine law, it has been Florian’s life’s work to keep the old vineyard names alive, to keep these voices alive. He has been fighting this fight since his first vintage in 2005 and only with an update to the law in 2014 can he now legally use the older vineyard names such as Unterstenberg, Stirn, Kern and Neuenberg.
Florian fought the law, and he won.
In addition to the expanses of the Kupp, Lauer farms two other important sites, Feils (historically called Saarfeilser, don’t ask me why they changed it) directly across the river and the precipitous, cliff-vineyard Schonfels, a bit upstream from the other two sites. Florian also recently cleared and replanted the famous Lambertskirch, just a stone’s throw from Schonfels. Everything is pretty well detailed on the map above.
Use the tabs below to read all about Florian’s various bottlings. If you’re nutty enough to read all this stuff, you’ll graduate with your PhD in Lauer. It’d be great if you’d then go and explain it all to your friends. Thanks so much!
-Vom Boden Imports