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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)

“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)

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)

The Grand Cru dry wines of Weiser-Künstler are among the most cerebral dry Rieslings made in the Mosel. They are wines of meditation, wines that seem to have something more to do with distillates or teas made from stone, ore and flower. They have very little easy fruit to hang one’s hat on. In other words, they are among the most thrilling wines from this fabled place.

-Importer notes (Vom Boden)