The almost 200-year-old Peter Lauer winery is located in the picturesque wine village of Ayl, not far from the world-famous Ayler Kupp vineyard. The family business is now run by Florian Lauer, the 5th generation, and was the last member to be admitted to the VDP in 2013. Finally, connoisseurs of the winery will say, because up until then, despite some difficult vintages, the Lauers had already delivered one excellent collection after another and proven that their Rieslings are among the best in the region. For example, their off-dry Riesling "Kern" from the heart of the Ayler Kupp has been awarded as the best off-dry wine in Germany by Gault & Millau three times! The previous highlight was the 2016 vintage, in which the Peter Lauer winery was voted "Newcomer of the Year" by Gault & Millau and, on top of that, also shone with the best collection of the year in the same well-known wine guide. Today, the estate cultivates around 10 hectares of steep slopes around Ayl. The best known of these is the Ayler Kupp, an old meander core of the Saar, which, with its perfect south exposition and finely weathered blue slate soils, produces complex Rieslings with exotic fruit aromas. Furthermore, after joining the business in 2005, Florian Lauer painstakingly recultivated a more than 100-year-old vineyard in the Schonfels site. This impressive vineyard is located on a barren, rugged rock face, high above the Saar, and year after year produces one of Germany's most expressive and fascinating Grosses Gewächse. Last but not least, the Lauers also own a parcel in the Feils vineyard, a unique vineyard because it lies on a kind of peninsula between the old arm of the Saar and the canalized part of the Saar, and the first half meter of soil consists of a mixture of river pebbles and sediment that were deposited there during the canalization of the Saar. This specific terroir gives the wine a uniquely fine texture and crystal-clear aromatics. The Lauers' latest project is just a stone's throw from Schonfels. There, not far from a small chapel, the Lauers breathed new life into a small fallow parcel 10 years ago and planted it with the best Riesling vines. Today, excellent Kabinett and Spätlese wines are produced in the Lambertskirch site, which are characterized by their unique aromatics, often reminiscent of spice notes such as nutmeg and cubeb pepper. However, the path to this impressive portfolio of vineyards was long and arduous...

Since its beginnings in 1830, the winery has been located in the heart of Ayl. Matthias Lauer, Florian Lauer's great-great-grandfather, married the daughter of Matthias Könen in 1904, and shortly thereafter, in 1906, Peter Lauer I was born. His father, Matthias, then took over his in-laws' business in 1913 and expanded it until shortly before the First World War. After the war, Peter Lauer I trained as a vine grafter and took over the business in 1938, shortly before the Second World War. Shortly after the war ended, Peter Lauer II was born in 1949, and since then, it has been a family tradition for the firstborn male descendant to bear the name Peter. A little later, in 1956, the Lauers had a unique opportunity to expand their business by purchasing the renowned Saarburg winery Notar Tappen-Mungenast. This allowed them to secure excellent parcels in the Neuenberg, Unterstenberg, and Feils. In 1973, Peter Lauer II, Florian Lauer's father, took over the winery and has since successively worked on establishing the winery's current reputation. Since the father-son duo Peter and Florian Lauer began jointly managing the business in 2006, the Lauer Rieslings have reached an entirely new level of quality and stand nationally and internationally for a highly individual, expressive type of Riesling.

The Peter Lauer winery has always focused 100% on Riesling from steep slate vineyards. These are cultivated using organic farming methods. However, Florian Lauer does not seek certification because he strictly rejects the use of copper, as the heavy metal accumulates in the soil over years and severely impairs biodiversity and soil life there. Therefore, the winery completely refrains from spraying insecticides and herbicides and fertilizes its vineyards exclusively with fresh cow and horse manure from the nearby Ayler stables. During harvesting, the grapes from the individual plots are strictly separated and picked by hand before being macerated at the winery for a longer or shorter period, depending on the vintage, and then gently pressed. The skin contact time gives Lauer's Rieslings, among other things, their intense aroma and silky texture. Subsequently, the musts are spontaneously fermented with natural yeasts from the vineyard and the old vaulted cellar in traditional Moselle Fuder barrels. The use of animal fining agents is completely avoided, making the wines vegan. The Rieslings remain on the lees until shortly before bottling, and in some barrels, the lees are stirred occasionally (batonnage), which gives them a particularly silky texture and mouth-coating richness.

One of the absolute unique features of the Peter Lauer winery is the fuder-by-fuder bottling and labeling of individual barrels with numbers on the label. This tradition dates back to the winery's founder, Peter Lauer I, who, initially not very spectacularly, like most winemakers, also numbered his barrels in the cellar. However, he came up with the groundbreaking idea of fermenting the musts from individual parcels in the same wooden barrel each year. Since the natural yeasts can overwinter in the open wood pores, a unique yeast culture has developed in each individual wooden barrel after years of repetition. This culture is specifically adapted to the respective wine, for example, it is particularly alcohol-tolerant and therefore excellent for the production of dry wines. For you, dear customers, this offers the invaluable advantage that each barrel bottling from Lauer is stylistically absolutely comparable year after year. For example, Barrel 25 is always the dry village wine with smoky, mineral notes and a fine texture, while Barrel 4 is always the delicious, off-dry fun wine that is accessible earlier, and so on. Therefore, once you have found your favorite barrel, you can practically buy it every year without hesitation, as you know exactly what to expect. Of course, every vintage is fortunately different, and your favorite barrel will sometimes be lighter/sometimes richer, sometimes more or less acidic, but the basic style, such as taste profile (dry/off-dry/sweet) and aromatics, is absolutely comparable every year! In addition, for some bottlings, not only the barrel number but also the name of the respective parcel is noted. This is Lauer's reaction to the nonsensical effects of the 1971 Wine Law. This law led to virtually all vineyards around Ayl (Rauberg, Scheidterberg, and Sonnenberg) being marketed as Ayler Kupp, even though they differ significantly in their location, exposition, and soil structure, so much so that even inexperienced laypeople could easily perceive the taste differences of the respective wines. The Lauers did not want to accept this dilution of the original Ayler Kupp's flavor profile, so they took the concept of origin to its extreme and even put the names of the individual parcels on the labels of their top growths. For example, the off-dry top Riesling "Unterstenberg" comes from the lower slope of the Ayler Kupp, where the somewhat deeper soils with good water supply lead to wines that are a bit riper and fuller-bodied. In contrast, just a few meters away, on the uppermost ridge of the Ayler Kupp, Rieslings grow in the "Stirn" parcel, which are exposed to wind and weather all year round on the meager, stony soil, producing very taut, sinewy wines. The quartet of parcel-specific Ayler Kupp bottlings is completed by two other Rieslings: "Kern," the prime plot of the Ayler Kupp in the middle section with perfect exposure and good water supply, and "Neuenberg," a parcel in the newer part of the Ayler Kupp, both just a few meters away. Finally, the Lauers indicate the sweetness level of their wines using a symbol at the bottom center of their labels. T stands for dry, TF for dry to off-dry, meaning wines that, according to their residual sugar, are legally not allowed to be called dry but taste quite dry (an example would be Barrel 6 "Senior"), and F for off-dry.

The style of Peter Lauer's wines can be described as expressive, mineral, and at times extreme. The full-bodied, aromatic estate Rieslings form the foundation of Lauer's portfolio, followed by mineral, expressive village wines, and at the top, sophisticated terroir wines from Grand Cru sites with great aging potential, made from some ungrafted vines over 100 years old. Florian Lauer's dry and off-dry wines set standards in the region. His noble sweet Prädikat and, in particular, auction wines are often ingeniously brilliant treasures that ignite a true fireworks display on the palate with their sometimes razor-sharp acidity and explosive aromas. The grapes are uncompromisingly selected to clearly define the individual Prädikat levels: healthy, just ripe grapes with crisp acidity for Kabinett; healthy, overripe and golden-yellow berries for Spätlese; overripe berries with a proportion of botrytis for Auslese; 100% noble rot grapes for Beerenauslese; and 100% noble rot, heavily raisined grapes for Trockenbeerenauslese. This strengthens the profile of the individual Prädikat levels and makes each one clearly comprehensible.

Another house specialty is the production of absolutely extraordinary sparkling wines, which are only released after an extremely long aging period on the lees, some lasting over 30 years. These unique sparkling wines from the 1984, 1987, and 1992 vintages are absolute rarities. They impress with their distinctive aromatics, characterized on the one hand by incredible freshness and on the other by exceptionally complex, smoky-saline flavors that will enthuse whiskey lovers among you, dear customers. At the latest, your jaw should drop when you look at the label, because we are dealing here with dry (Brut) and partly bone-dry (Brut Nature) Riesling sparkling wines that have only 9.5% alcohol by volume. De facto, Kabinett was used as the base wine for these sparkling wines back then, which makes the whole thing even more incredible! These exceptional sparkling wines are best enjoyed in larger glasses, as they gain significantly with aeration after their long time on the lees and gradually unfold their complex aromas. If you don't want to enjoy these unparalleled rarities on their own, we recommend some of our dream food pairings: smoked eel with wasabi or generally any fatty fish from the smoker, smoked ham, sushi, and, curiously, these sparkling wines also make an excellent counterpoint to hearty German home cooking such as kale with Pinkel sausage!