Pick up a bottle from Peter Lauer and the first thing you read is a number. Faß 9, Faß 12, Faß 18. Other estates invent names for their wines that sound like perfumes or racehorses. In Ayl on the Saar a number suffices – and unlike some fanciful labels, it can even be checked. It is written on a cask in the cellar.

A cellar with house numbers

The estate explains its system most succinctly itself: „Jedes Fass entspricht einem markanten Ausbaustil und einer besonderen Herkunft.“ (our translation: “Each cask corresponds to a distinctive style and a particular origin.”) The numbers follow, as the website puts it, the grandfather’s custom of „der Hausnummer im Kellergewölbe“ (our translation: “the house number in the cellar vault”). Each year, the must from certain vineyards is fermented in the same vessel as the year before. There is sound reasoning behind this: the wild yeast population overwinters in the wood, so the same origin ferments again in a style comparable to its predecessors. The casks are Fuder, the traditional Mosel cask of 1,000 litres, and according to the estate’s history page they have „schon immer“ (our translation: “always”) been bottled individually.

Fermentation is spontaneous, without cultured yeasts, long and slow, with extended lees contact. The grapes are picked by hand, usually from mid- or late October into November. The wines are vegan, as no animal-derived fining agents are used.

Why the numbers still feature so prominently on the label has a second explanation. According to JancisRobinson.com and the US importer vom Boden, the wine law of 1971 merged the historic sections of the Ayler Kupp under a single name. The cask number thus also became a substitute for parcel names that could no longer be used. Only in 2014, they say, did a change in the law allow the old parcel names (Gewann names) back on to the label. The numbers stayed all the same, which is understandable: someone who has been ordering Faß 18 for decades does not want to relearn everything overnight.

The Kupp, piece by piece

The Ayler Kupp is the heart of the estate. The VDP (Verband Deutscher Prädikatsweingüter, Germany’s association of top estates) lists it as a Große Lage – its top site tier, equivalent to Grand Cru – with three parcels: Neuenberg, Kern and Unterstenberg. The estate’s catalogue adds the Stirn, the shallow-soiled summit ridge. Leaf through the Expertisenkatalog for the 2023 vintage and you can practically walk the Kupp:

  • Faß 9, Kern: a historic parcel with a gradient of around 50 per cent and 78-year-old vines, made in a feinherb (off-dry) style.
  • Faß 12, Unterstenberg: the old foot of the slope with finely weathered slate, a gradient of between 10 and 55 per cent, vines of around 70 years.
  • Faß 15, Stirn: the ridge, 65 per cent steep, shallow soil.
  • Faß 17, Neuenberg: documented as early as 1835, according to the catalogue.
  • Faß 18, Kupp GG: by the estate’s account the steepest and warmest spot on the hill, with a 68 per cent gradient – the dry wine from the Große Lage, a Großes Gewächs (GG).

The vine ages refer to the 2023 vintage. Remarkably, the prime piece of the Kupp only came to the estate in 1956. That year the family bought the Notar Tappen-Mungenast estate in Saarburg, and with it parcels in the Kupp and in the Feils site.

Beyond the Kupp, the estate works in further Große Lagen. In the Schonfels, beneath a rocky cliff, the catalogue records vines that were already 111 years old in 2023, on gradients of 70 per cent and more. The Feils – whose Großes Gewächs the estate bottles as Saarfeils GG, and which its website calls the Saar “Feilser” – is a steep gravel slope right by the river, whose soil the estate compares with that of the Médoc. Lambertskirch, a monopole site, is a special case: according to Mosel Fine Wines, the family bought the abandoned, overgrown plot in 2010, cleared it and replanted it in 2012; the first tiny crop followed in 2014. The estate itself speaks of cuttings from hundred-year-old Riesling vines from the Saar valley.

Between dry and off-dry

Stylistically, Peter Lauer is an estate that refuses to be pinned down to a single taste profile. „Unser Ausbaustil reicht von extra trocken bis edelsüss“ (our translation: “Our style ranges from extra dry to nobly sweet”), says Florian Lauer in the VDP portrait. Instead of putting Prädikat levels on every label, the estate uses symbols for the style: dry, dry to off-dry, off-dry, fruity to nobly sweet. It is the shades in between that have shaped the estate’s reputation. According to the VDP, one of its off-dry Rieslings was named Germany’s best feinherb Riesling three times by Gault&Millau and in 2018 entered the Hall of Fame of the Vinum wine guide.

Florian Lauer, according to the journalist Wolfgang Staudt, studied agricultural science in Hohenheim and viticulture and oenology in Montpellier. His guiding principle appears tersely in the VDP portrait: „Die Landschaft in die Flasche bringen.“ (our translation: “To bring the landscape into the bottle.”) Asked there how he reconciles tradition and innovation, he replies with a sentence that hints at why the cask system has survived: „Das wissenschaftlichste Studium zählt beim Wein wenig ohne jene schlitzohrigen Heuristiken der Vorväter.“ (our translation: “In wine, the most scientific training counts for little without the crafty rules of thumb of our forefathers.”)

Five generations and a new beginning

By the estate’s own account, the family history begins in 1830 with Matthias Könen. Matthias Lauer married his daughter in 1904 and took over the business in 1913. Peter Lauer I, born in 1906, ran it from 1938, and Peter Lauer II, born in 1949, from 1973. Florian Lauer, the fifth generation, has worked at the estate since 2006, and it has been a member of the VDP since 2013. Today it farms 13 hectares, exclusively Riesling.

In 2026 the management changed. On 1 January the estate was converted into a limited partnership (Kommanditgesellschaft), and since April Florian Lauer has been working as climate adaptation manager for the Saarburg-Kell municipal association. Two long-serving employees have moved up into the management: Max Kirsch, responsible for vineyard operations, finance and staff, and cellar master Max Zellerhoff, who was already in charge of the 2025 vintage. Formally, according to Vinum and wein.plus, Florian Lauer remains one of three managing partners who take decisions on an equal footing. He has, however, stepped back from day-to-day business and now supports the estate only in an advisory capacity, behind the scenes. Lauer does not see this as a farewell: „Nein, der Familienbetrieb besteht fort, allerdings ergänzt um zwei neue Protagonisten, die die Tradition weiterführen“ (our translation: “No, the family business continues, albeit joined by two new protagonists who will carry the tradition forward”), der deutsche weinbau quotes him as saying.

The casks stay where they are. And as long as the same must runs into the same wood in the vault every year, the numbering system will remain what it has always been: a very short description of a very long story.