Welcome to the Lauer vineyard tour; we’re happy to have you. We begin with an overview shot of the Mosel — the pin is dropped in Piesport where Julian Haart’s main sites are. Up in the top right of the screen you can see Traben Trarbach where Weiser-Künstler and Vollenweider are and a few bends of the river beyond that is Alf where Ulli Stein and Phil Lardot are.
We then take a brief stop in the village of Ayl where the winery is located in the heart of the Saar (12 seconds).
Now we swing around to look at two, cool, eastern-facing slopes with two important vineyards: the Rauberg and the Scheidterberg. The village wine No. 25 comes from the Rauberg; the coolness of this site gives the wine an intense saltiness and bright acidity (20 seconds).
The Scheidterberg, next (26 seconds), is considered a kind of 1er cru, nearly grand cru especially in the center where the warm section is facing south. Much, most, or all of the “Barrel X” comes from the Schiedterberg, depending on the vintage. These are both serious sites.
Next we move to Lauer’s playground, the formidable Ayler Kupp. Our first stop is at the south-east “tail” of the Ayler Kupp – called “Wald” on old maps (and circled by a green line here) – where there are 70-year-old-plus, ungrafted vines (35 seconds). This is where the wine called “Senior” comes from, named in honor of Florian’s grandfather who loved this wine and would frequently reserve the cask from this site for personal consumption by simply writing: “Senior” on the barrel.
Then, the Kern, outlined in yellow (42 seconds), one of the most complete of the Ayler Kupp wines as it has a whole cross section from top to bottom, named after the industrialist who cleared this site in the 19th century. The vines are old here as well, over 70-years-old, so the wine has some stuffing. Kern is normally gently off-dry in style, yet, with Lauer, it’s always about the balance.
Next is the curious Neuenberg (49 seconds), one of the most historically important parcels in the Ayler Kupp. This site has wet fields directly below which create a cool and damp haze around the vines, leading to a very clean and delicate botrytis, giving a concentration and slight exotic quality to the wines from this small site. Florian’s father planted these vines with future generations in mind, as the site was still too cold to make great wine in his day.
We arrive at the warmest and oldest part of the Ayler Kupp with slide eight (58 seconds). First, the Unterstenberg: Even in Roman times they noticed the snow melted quickly in this area and planted grapes in the earliest farming of the Saar. This parcel sits at the foot of the hill; the wines it producers are deep and powerful – heady. Over the last few years they have fermented dry a few times.
Next is the “filet” section of the Kupp (1:05 seconds) where the GG comes from, this was replanted in 1956 by Peter Lauer Senior and this is the steepest and warmest part of the slope. It is perhaps the most elegant of the GG wines, with fine layers and a suave, polished finesse—it has both fruit and depth and mineral core of slate and salt.
Finally at the top is Stirn (1:10 seconds), which translates to “forehead,” as it’s the summit of the slope. Here there is very little water and the interplay of this fact and the coolness of the stones makes a kind of baby Kabinett, usually quite off dry and soaringly angelic.
The Kupp’s east side (1:15 seconds) is where wines such as No. 3 come from, a kind of spiritual kin to the Stirn wine. Again, this is another area that has benefited tremendously from the warming climate, now turning out wines of incredible finesse and balance.
Further south in the village is one of the greatest sites of the Saar called the Schonfels (1:25 seconds) with 110+ year-old, ungrafted vines. While the vineyard has always had a huge reputation, Florian’s father let the site go fallow in the 1980s. The reason? It was simply too expensive and too difficult and dangerous to farm. Because the site is so steep and “ends” with a rock face that drops a few hundred feet to a street below, harvesters must be harnessed in, via a carabiner, to a tractor parked at the top of the vineyard. There can be no slipping here; it is truly a matter of life and death. Florian’s decision, in the late 2000s, to rehabilitate this site was equal parts daring, brilliant, insane, and wildly risky.
Lambertskirch (1:30 seconds) is the next small site on slide thirteen, cleared of the overgrown brush in 2010 by Florian. This was another reclaimed site like the Schonfels, but unfortunately the vines here needed to be replaced; a former owner had ripped everything up and had planted an orchard. Florian replanted the tiny site from selection massale cuttings of the oldest Riesling vines at the estate.
Next, we move to the north, downriver, to the Sonnenberg (1:40 seconds) which is a site that has come online in the last few decades thanks to the Saar channel that now warms this site—previously it was often hit hard with frost. This is where a number of off dry Village level Rieslings come from.
Finally, we come to the Feils (1:45 seconds). The Feils is a unique site for the Saar in a number of ways. First, you’ll note that it is right up against the Saar river. While in the Mosel this is common, in the Saar this is rather unique. Many of the Saar’s greatest sites (the Kupp, Bockstein, Scharzhofberg) run perpendicular to the river. Thus, generally speaking, they are cooler. Thus, generally speaking, we have the piercing, arrow-like acidity that has made the Saar one of the most hallowed Riesling terroirs on earth.
Yet the Feils is unique in its rather direct relationship with the river. It’s also an interesting site because the river pushes up against and flows around the vineyard, giving the site a good amount of alluvial soil, especially toward the bottom. This is a warmer site; it is also sneakily steep. Convex like the backside of a spoon, the vineyard begins mildly as you walk through it heading down to the river. However, as one reaches center-slope the incline becomes quite severe. The lowest third of the vineyard is extremely steep. The wine the Feils produces is one of the most textural and luscious of the GGs; from the beginning it can show a rather broad range of fruit and spice. It also tends to drink earlier than Lauer’s other GGs, though obviously this can change vintage to vintage.
The overview at the end of the tour (1:57 seconds) gives you the wide-angle look at all the sites, with the Rauerberg and Scheidterberg to the left, the Kupp front and center, the Schonfels and Lambertskirch toward the bottom and the Sonnenberg and Feils toward the top.
The most important category of Lauer wines we’ll call the “terroir” wines. These are the Rieslings that have made Lauer so famous. These wines eschew the whole Prädikat system (Kabinett, Spätlese, etc) completely. They ferment spontaneously with natural yeasts and thus they find their own balance. In most cases they have a bit more residual sugar than a purely dry wine, yet not nearly enough sugar to be considered sweet. Let’s call them dry-tasting to off dry. First, there is the appellation-level Barrel X. This is Lauer’s Platonic ideal of what a Saar Riesling should be. If we were in Burgundy this would be the equivalent of a Bourgogne Blanc. As an appellation-level wine, it is sourced from multiple vineyards in three different villages of the Saar. This is always a thrilling off-dry and a silly value.
Next up the hierarchy is the “Senior.” While Lauer considers this a village-level wine (special Lauer label-reading tip: any bottle with a green circle on it is considered a village-level wine), it is in fact a single-vineyard wine sourced completely from the Ayler Kupp. With an average vine age of around 70 years and a plethora of ungrafted vines, this is a wine that punches well above its price. This is a Grand Cru wine in everything but price and it remains, for me, one of the greatest values in white wine, period. Although there can be vintage variation, this wine is normally dry tasting.
The remaining wines in this category, the bottles with the golden circles on the labels, are the “Grand Cru” terroir wines. What is important here is the vineyard site: Unterstenberg, Stirn, Kern and Neuenberg. Each of these vineyards has its unique voice. Taste Unterstenberg next to Stirn. The difference in distance is only 300 feet, yet the wines are night and day.
Lauer also produces three “Grand Cru” dry Rieslings, or GGs: Kupp, Feils (called Saarfeilser for many years, and denoted on the map as such) and Schonfels. For the Kupp, Lauer picks the best grapes from the heart of the Kupp, denoted by the area in red on the map above. The Saarfeilser and the Schonfels are both used nearly in their entirety for the GGs. Because of their immense structure, these wines are released later than all the others, normally in the winter/spring of the year following the harvest.
When the vintage allows it, Florian will craft Prädikat wines, the Kabinetts, Spätlesen and Auslesen that we all know and once loved. As the focus of Lauer’s production is clearly on the dry and dry-tasting wines, the Prädikat wines are only made when the vintage is perfect for such wines. It is possible to have a vintage with only a Kabinett, or only a Spätlese. In nearly all cases, these wines are sourced from the Kupp and represent in fact a pre-selection of grapes. In other words, Lauer selects out the grapes that are ripening too quickly, or showing botrytis for these wines. The remaining grapes are left on the vine for the drier wines.
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 name “Barrel X” playfully suggests as much alluding to the fact it does not have its own barrel.
