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This is the earlier picking/younger-vine selection from the Grand Cru Halenberg. For those of you twisted enough to understand German wine law and the VDP, this would be the estate’s “Spätlese Trocken” if they were allowed to label it as such.

As with the Grand Cru, the wine is powerful and dense, supremely mineral and forceful. As with the “Frühtau” it is also not a wine to underestimate. This is a wine that one can cellar and with 5-10+ years it shows the depth of its material.

-Supplier notes (Vom Boden)

Another village level off-dry, this is sourced from various parcels on the “Grand Cru” Kupp – as such this is more the equivalent of “Senior.” This is a “Grand Cru” wine declassified and sold at village-level pricing. This tends to be a bit deeper and broader-shouldered than the Fass 4; it has more mineral complexity and more depth.

Ayler has been a regular guest on wine lists in German restaurants since the 1920s and was described in a charming way with the attributes: “natural, flowery, spicy, demanding”. This description has not lost any of its validity over 100 years.

Another bad-ass wine and one of the inspirations for our new campaign: “Spätlese is the new Kabinett.” I ask Florian how it’s selling. He says, “good,” and then adds this funny but honest line: “The Spätlese isn’t sweet here.” Seventy-four grams of residual sugar and it tastes almost dry. I don’t understand anything.

“Kern” is named after the 19th century industrialist that cleared this more-western part of the Kupp; it is a small parcel that spans the entire top-to-bottom reach of the Kupp. Thus, for me, the wine always has something of the lift and rigor of “Stirn” and something of the depth of wines like “Neuenberg” and “Unterstenberg.” After the sun has finished its work on the hot stones during the day, the coolness pulls up the mountain and noticeably lowers the temperature. The vines are old here, well over 70-years-old, so the wine has some stuffing. It is most often well in that off-dry style, yet, with Lauer, it’s always about the balance.

-Importer notes (Vom Boden)

“Barrel X” is winemaker Florian Lauer’s Platonic ideal of what a slightly off-dry (feinherb) 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 four different villages of the Saar: Ayl (Lauer’s home village), Saarburg, Wawern and Wiltingen. Florian says, “From Ayl and Wawern, the wine gains the fruit and power, from Saarburg the racy acidity, and from Wiltingen, the spice.”

Regardless of what comes from where, this much is certain: dollar for dollar, I’m not sure there is a 750ml bottle that delivers as much joy and zing. This is the gateway drug to Lauer, to the Saar, to Riesling… be careful. Very addictive.

-supplier notes (Vom Boden)

Here’s the open, obvious secret: Lauer’s “Senior” is one of the of the greatest values in German wine, and frankly white wine, period. 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), the “Senior” is in fact a single-vineyard wine sourced completely from the Grand Cru 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. It is Grand Cru for the price of village, plain and simple.

In most vintages the wines is fermented to just off-dry (in 2022 legally dry with 9.5 RS, 9.3 acid) and flaunts a precocious balance, a magical, just barely perceptible off-dry-ness that reminds me of the Weiser-Künstler Feinherb, yet the Ludes is not quite as cut or lifted. This is a curvier, also lighter and more ephemeral-feeling wine – as if you don’t really even have to drink it, as if it will just saturate and then evaporate, leaving a pleasing sorta wine-tingle. If the wine can feel perhaps monochromatic, it’s monochromatic in the way that Brice Marden’s early paintings were monochromatic – which is to say, layered, complex, richly textural… just sort of so-integrated that picking out the single layers is impossible. The wine smells of the perfume of fermentation, pears, quince, spice, flowers and rocks with a rustic spritzy energy. Just essential deliciousness.

-importer notes (Vom Boden)

A silky and noble Cuvée by the Keller’s son Felix, of Pinot blanc, Chardonnay and great old Silvaner parcels.