N/V Brut Rosé

Sparkling wine, especially champagne, has always been a great passion of Gerhard Kracher. When he started working in the Kracher family business in the early 2000s and vinified the first wines himself, he began experimenting with sparkling wine for the first time. At first, Gerhard tried producing a great base wine as a foundation. He then carried out a second fermentation in the bottle. Unfortunately, the sparkling wine was far from ready with these steps and sparkling wine production turned out to be more difficult than expected.

The real work begins in the vineyard. Yields have to be increased slightly so that the base wine is not too concentrated when physiologically ripe. A certain amount of maturation is required before the second fermentation in the bottle. When blending the different grape varieties and base wines, the development of the second fermentation and many other factors must be taken into account.

It finally took until 2014, twelve years, for the first Kracher Brut Rosé to be available on the market. In between, there were several trips to Champagne in France and a lot of information exchange with the cellar masters there in order to apply their knowledge in Illmitz.

Today, the Brut Rosé consists of Zweigelt, Chardonnay and Pinot Blanc, which are fermented and matured separately. Gerhard opted for a sparkling wine without a vintage, as the different vintages achieve a nice balance. Around 50% of the base wines are aged for between one and three years in used barriques and 50% in steel tanks on the fine lees. They are then bottled, where the second fermentation takes place to create the carbonic acid. The wine then rests on the fine lees for a further three and a half years. The sparkling wine is disgorged after riddling, which causes the fine yeast and cloudy substances to collect in the neck of the bottle. The neck of the bottle is frozen, opened and the yeast is shot out of the bottle by the pressure of the carbon dioxide.

Now it's time for the dosage. The dosage is usually a mixture of sugar and old base wines to make the sparkling wine rounder and more pleasant. It is only a few milliliters per bottle. Because the Kracher winery specializes in sweet wine, Gerhard naturally immediately thought of sweet wine for the dosage. We did a lot of trials with young Trockenbeerenauslese, old Trockenbeerenauslese, different varieties and so on ... The best results were achieved with a dosage of long matured Trockenbeerenauslese. At the moment, every bottle of Brut Rosé contains a few milliliters of TBA Collection 1998 No.7 Chardonnay/Welschriesling. This is what gives the sparkling wine its wonderful harmony and smoothness. Now some will assume that this sparkling wine is sweet. On the contrary, the total sugar content is around 7g/l, which is very low for sparkling wine.  

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