Overview
In der Sengerei (also written Sängerei) is not a Saar site but a named parcel of the Dhroner Hofberg on the Middle Mosel. The name reached labels through Weingut A.J. Adam of Neumagen-Dhron, whose Riesling feinherb "In der Sengerei" is a single-parcel bottling from within the Hofberg, and it is through that wine, imported to the United States by Skurnik Wines, that the name circulates in the trade. The parcel page exists on wine lists for the same reason Lauer's Kupp parcels do: a producer chose to bottle one distinctive section of a larger classified hillside under its old field name.
Terroir & Position
The Hofberg rises in the Dhron valley, a small side valley of the Mosel just south of Piesport, named for the Dhron tributary. It is a steep, broadly south to southwest facing slope that received the top rating on the Prussian vineyard maps of 1868. Its soils are rocky gray slate crossed by veins of iron oxide. Within it, the Sengerei parcel sits in a dell, a sheltered hollow of the hillside, planted with vines of around 70 years of age on rocky gray slate.
Producers
Weingut A.J. Adam is the producer associated with the name. Andreas Adam revived his family estate beginning with the 2000 vintage, starting from a single hectare of his grandfather's vines and buying into the Hofberg while much of the hill still lay abandoned; his sister Barbara Adam, trained at Geisenheim and with cellar experience at Weingut Keller in Rheinhessen, joined the estate in 2013. Holdings now total about 5 hectares, split among some 45 small parcels in the Dhroner Hofberg, the monopole Dhroner Häs'chen, and the Piesporter Goldtröpfchen.
What to Know
The Sengerei bottling is a feinherb, carrying moderate residual sugar (17 g/l in the 2023), fermented spontaneously and raised in a mix of old Fuder casks and stainless steel. Critical coverage places it among the estate's most distinctive wines: Vinous rated the 2023 96 points, noting the 70-year-old vines and the dell position. Buyers should not confuse the parcel with A.J. Adam's fuller Hofberg bottlings; the Sengerei is the mid-weight, off-dry expression of the same gray slate.