2012 Weingut Peter Lauer "Senior"
Saar Riesling in its Most Glorious Form
Simply put: Florian Lauer's Senior is one of the most beloved bottles at Crush - both for staff and customers alike.
Florian Lauer doesn't pull any punches with his wines. There's no effort to pander to tastes or simplify things. "Riesling for advanced learners'' is his motto.
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And, yes, Lauer's wines are dead serious, captivatingly so. However, when it comes to his Senior it's impossible not have a deep fondness for them. There's such a beautiful honesty to Lauer's Senior, such a steely minerality that it goes far beyond the intellectual. The wine gets under your skin. We created 6-pack pricing for exactly this reason.
Back in 09 we introduced Lauer to the U.S. under the title of THE German Discovery of the Year! The wines have since gone cult. There may be no clearer sign of how Lauer's reputation has grown than his admittance into the VdP growers association in January of 2013.
Lauer's 2012 Senior arrived yesterday and it took us about three hours before a bottle was opened. I have to say that the 2012 brought me back to the original excitement of tasting Lauer for the first time. 2012 is a really, really good year for the wine.
2012 Senior is Saar Riesling in its most glorious form - it's bright, transparent, nimble and finessed. '12 Senior is also intense, carrying a serious palate presence saturated in slate with bright citrus. Lauer focuses a large part of his energy on "dry tasting" Riesling. (The '12 Senior has 13 grams of R.S.)
A large part of the explanation of how Senior combines such mineral intensity with detail and precision has to be the vines' age. The always informative Lars Carlberg writes, "Senior comes from 15 different plots totaling 1 ha in the section of the Kupp hillside known as Wald and Neuanlage... sourced from vines planted from 1910 to 1920," These sites are in a cooler section of Kupp and you definitely feel the density of the old (often ungrafted) vines along with the nervous tension of the cool site.
For anyone interested in mineral wines with that razor's edge cut, these wines are not to be overlooked. Lauer's 2012 Senior is just a thrilling wine and one of the greatest values out there. It will have no problem aging for the next 7-10 years and most likely beyond. Again and again, customers tell us how they can't help but drink Senior young. We feel you - that's why I'm personally going to go deep on the '12.
To order, reply to offers@crushwineco.com or call the store at (212) 980-9463.
Joe Salamone
Wine Buyer
Crush Wine & Spirits