The Secret of Sweetness: Noble Rot and Bone-chilling Cold
The wines from the Kracher estate are naturally sweet. The sweetness and the diversity of aromas and flavours are not due to cellar technique, but are solely from the natural concentration of the grape extract. This concentration can be reached in two ways: through noble rot or through frost.
Sweet Wines from Noble Rot
Wines with the Auslese, Beerenauslese and Trockenbeerenauslese designations almost always have been produced from grapes infected with the Botrytis cinerea fungus. The fungus causes the grapes to lose water and shrivel to a raisin-like state – full of sugar, acidity and flavour concentration. During fermentation, a portion of natural sugar remains in the wine and can total 130 grams per liter or even more. At the same time, the Botrytis lends to the wine aroma and flavour components reminiscent of toasted bread or Panettone.
Working with botrytized grapes requires a lot of intuition and feeling. The grapes must be gathered at just the right time - when they are clearly in a shrunken state, yet before too much volatile acidity has developed in them. In order to achieve this, there must be a strict selection of the grapes, something that is reflected by the term Auslese. Gerhard Kracher walks through the vineyards up to eight times per harvest in order to capture that right moment for each grape.
Ice Wine
In order to make ice wine, the grapes must be frozen while being harvested as well as when they are pressed. The results from frost can be somewhat similar to that from noble rot: water in the grapes is reduced – in this case, crystallized – and the must is naturally concentrated.
Ice wines usually show no tones of Botrytis and their fruit is clearer, more linear and fresher, yet they are not as complex than their botrytized siblings.
Gerhard Kracher makes his sweet wines in two styles, both of which are made from single varietals only, not cuvée blends.
Zwischen den Seen (Between the Lakes)
The name, in a broader sense, stands for a site denomination. The vines for these wines grow between the large and small lakes of the Seewinkel. While the style follows classic Burgenland tradition, it gives a new interpretation at the same time. These wines are matured in large wooden barrels or in stainless steel tanks, and undergo long yeast contact. Their focus: to bring freshness, fruit and primary grape aromas and flavours into the bottle.
Nouvelle Vague
Like the French film movement with the same name, this wine style represents a kind of synthesis, an openness. The style is international yet it is also very distinctive, because ideas and influences from many wine-growing areas are woven together into a new expression of oneness. Nouvelle Vague wines are barrique-matured and exude a vibrant character – lively in flavour, depth, spiciness and length.
