100% Riesling

Food pairings: Roast chicken and pork, scallops, crab and sushi, fresh cheeses, herbed vegetables, and Thai or Vietnamese dishes.

Scores:

• 95 points, Vinous

Winemaking: The grapes were harvested fully ripe in mid-October, gently pressed after a short rest on the skins and fermented with natural yeasts in cool, old Mosel fuder casks, which lend only the subtlest touch of oak. The wine is bone-dry. 2024 brought frost-reduced yields and cool weather, and this site clearly benefited from the vintage's moisture.

Vineyards and terroir: Feils, long known as Saarfeilser, is one of the few great Saar vineyards right on the riverbank, across the Saar from Ayl's Kupp and legally part of the Ayler Kupp. In ancient times a mighty river left sand, gravel and stones across the valley; the young Saar cut into this old riverbed and created the steep, south-facing gravel slope of Feils on a peninsula. Its old vines root deep toward the groundwater without meeting rock. A particularly warm site with alluvial soils mixed in, and a soil the family compares with the Médoc, Feils gives opulent fresh-herb, mint and exotic notes, and it makes one of the most textural and generous of Lauer's three dry Grosses Gewächs.

Family and history: Weingut Peter Lauer is based in Ayl on the Saar. Florian Lauer, who made his first vintage in 2005, focuses on dry-tasting Rieslings fermented with natural yeasts, in contrast to the sweeter style of his famous Saar neighbor Egon Müller. He has long fought to keep the historic names of the Kupp's individual sites alive, which the law has allowed again since 2014, and he farms Feils, the cliff vineyard Schonfels and the once-famous Lambertskirch, which he cleared and replanted himself.

In the pictures: The Feils vineyard on the banks of the Saar (photo: vom Boden).