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Peter Lauer

Since taking over from his father Peter in 2005, Montpellier-trained Peter Lauer has brought long-deserved attention to his family’s estate while subtly shifting both style and marketing of its wines. Most labels still refer to a numbered fuder, but that can no longer be taken literally; rather, each number is now associated year after year with one particular style or site, and nearly all of the wines represent a blend of multiple lots. On the other hand, the chances that any given Lauer wine will actually have been raised in wood are gradually improving, following an increasing dominance of tanks in the waning 20th century. Prädikat terminology has been eliminated on Lauer labels except for a limited range of overtly sweet, stylistically-specific bottlings; and since joining the VDP in 2013 the younger Lauer has designated selected sites as sources of Grosses Gewächs (while retaining those wines’ fuder-number nicknames). This entails strongly encouraging the relevant musts to complete their fermentations, because increasingly in recent years the estate’s riper raw material has, if left to its own devices, tended to finish with at least subtle sweetness. That tendency has been enhanced by ever-riper fruit and longer lees contact for a net result of greater opulence if, in some recent vintages, a bit less clarity, levity or sheer refreshment than prevailed among Lauer wines during the 1980s or early 1990s (when, as a small importer, I was giving them their first significant exposure outside Germany or Luxembourg). From the late 1990s, Peter Lauer favored direct-pressing rather than crushing of his fruit, a practice that has been perpetuated by Florian Lauer, who attributes some of his success in several recent rot-challenged vintages to extremely slow, gentle pressing of whole clusters and the retention of only the juice liberated at low pressure. Recently enhanced cellar facilities include capacity for chilling incoming fruit, an important advantage in 2014. While a few of Lauer’s early Grosses Gewächs bottlings struck me as slightly inelegant on account of their levels of alcohol, that was certainly not a problem in 2014 when the trio ranged only from 12.3% to 12.6% alcohol. Similarly, when it came to 2014, extended and stirred lees contact seldom got in the way of clarity. With the exception of two generic bottlings, Lauer – like Loch and Niewodniczanski – omits the words “trocken,” “halbtrocken” or “feinherb” from his labels. But a tiny “T,” “TF” or “F” inside a circle at the bottom of a label indicates what Lauer perceives as that wine’s sense of sweetness.

Florian Lauer has already undertaken two ambitious projects of vineyard revitalization: his share of the Schonfels – perched precariously high above the Saar between Ayl and Saarburg – was brought back to life from a collection of ancient trunks and scrub and has already birthed several exciting wines, in keeping with that site’s historical reputation. And 2014 represented the first harvest from vines Lauer planted immediately downstream at the Lambertskirch, site of an ancient chapel whose tiny adjacent vineyard had been gone for decades. The enormous official Einzellage Ayler Kupp incorporates many more such geographically and microclimatically disparate locations, some of decidedly lesser quality; and soil, exposure and proximity to the Saar also differ across the strikingly prominent, prestigious slope that prompted the name “Ayler Kupp.” So it’s hardly surprising that Florian Lauer was among the first growers in the State of Rheinland-Pfalz to take advantage of the recent law authorizing registration and resurrection of old vineyard names. (In several previous instances, like his close friends and immediate neighbors Claudia and Manfred Loch, Lauer had taken to labeling wines with site names in the local Moselfränkisch dialect so as to do an end run around the longstanding legal prohibition against non-Einzellage vineyard designations.) In instances where these more specific site names apply to portions of the principal Ayl slope as opposed to a satellite, Lauer also prints “Ayler Kupp” in smaller letters on the labels, and I have accordingly included that as part of the relevant wines’ names.

From The Saar 2014: Stress for Success (Jul 2016) by David Schildknecht

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2012 Brut Riesling

Release Price: $35

Color: Sparkling White

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Peter Lauer

2012 Brut Riesling

1991 Brut Reserve Riesling

2014 Riesling feinherb Barrel X

2014 Riesling trocken Fass 16

2014 Ayler Riesling Fass 25

2014 Ayler Riesling Fass 2

2014 Ayler Riesling Fass 6 Senior

2014 Ayler Riesling Fass 1

2014 Ayler Kupp Unterstenberg Riesling Fass 12

2014 Ayler Neuenberg Riesling Fass 17 A.P. #171

2014 Ayler Neuenberg Riesling Fass 17 A.P. #17

2014 Ayler Kupp Riesling Grosses Gewächs Fass 18

2014 Ayler Schonfels Riesling Grosses Gewächs Fass 11

2014 Schodener Saarfeilser Riesling Grosses Gewächs Fass 13

2014 Ayler Riesling Fass 4

2014 Ayler Riesling Fass 3

2014 Ayler Kupp Stirn Riesling Fass 15

2014 Ayler Kupp Kern Riesling Fass 9

2014 Ayler Kupp Riesling Kabinett Fass 8

2014 Ayler Kupp Riesling Kabinett Fass 5

2014 Ayler Lambertskirch Riesling Spätlese

2014 Ayler Kupp Riesling Spätlese Fass 7

2014 Ayler Kupp Riesling Spätlese** Fass 23

2014 Ayler Kupp Riesling Auslese Fass 10

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