Weingut Peter Lauer

The Saar 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.”
Cold and mineral-rich but with sun that makes Rieslings as succulent as they are perfectly seasoned with salt and racy acidity.
Peter Lauer makes some of our very favorite Saar wines. It’s a bit hard to pin down exactly how Peter Lauer fits into today’s Riesling zeitgeist. He’s best known for his forward-leaning dry wines.



But he’s not just a trippy natural grower. He’s a neighbor of the great Egon Müller, and while their wines are oceans apart they share so many affinities, starting with a love for German tradition, terroir-specificity, and brilliance in Riesling. The Lauer wines are often described as drier, which is true as far as it goes; but even his driest wines have fruit and their own sort of decadence. They certainly have the Saar purity we love.
Probably, we just have to accept that there are multiple ways to express the greatness of the Saar.