(Manfred Klimek / Björn Grebner)
Yesterday afternoon at Gerhard Kracher’s in Illmitz was a wonderful moment. Not pathetic, but remarkably sober – and precisely for that reason possessing a quiet force, full of positive energy (which we urgently need in times like these).
Gerhard Kracher is 44 years old. At 23, he took over the winery after the death of his father Alois Kracher, that exceptional winemaker who had redrawn the international map of Burgenland with sweet wine and was awarded 96 to 100 points several times by Robert Parker . An inheritance that can also break you. Kracher junior did the opposite. He paused, listened; and worked – initially together with his grandfather and mother, later with his Hanseatic wife Yvonne Kracher, with whom he simultaneously built up a significant international wine trade – on a new structure. Sweet wines at the top, new white and red wines: also with partners, also abroad. Not a break, but an expansion. No distancing from the myth, but an intelligent continuation.
The most important wine of this visit consequently came into the glass first: the Grande Cuvée 2005, that sweet wine which once tempted Parker into awarding a magical 100 points. Even today, two decades later, this wine appears not monumental, but juicy and velvety, controlled. Density without heaviness, sweetness without sluggishness, an inner framework of low acidity and low salt, which nevertheless carries the wine with weight rather than displaying it banally.
That Kracher has long been capable of more than sweet wine is shown by the Pinot Gris Reserve 2022. Dry, taut, coolly handled, with that seriousness which Pinot Gris so rarely achieves in Central Europe. No fat, no ingratiation, but structure, length, substance. Maximally delicate, and once again that Seelacken salt note which the soils here acquire from the small salt lakes.
Equally consistent is the dry Cuvée K made from Welschriesling, Chardonnay and Scheurebe: a wine that does not want to please everyone, but then also plays the populist, rustic card intellectually – the Scheurebe is responsible for that. Multi-layered, full of tension, with an inner dynamism that makes it clear that someone here understands wine as precise craftsmanship – not as a stylistic quotation. And yet not overloaded – pure drinking wine.
Particularly revealing was the Chardonnay St. Georg 2022 from the Leitha Mountains, created in collaboration with Aldo Sohm. Sohm, a son of Tyrolean origins and an internationally renowned top sommelier, has lived and worked in the USA for years and has made a substantial contribution there to establishing European wine beyond folkloric stereotypes. This Chardonnay embodies that dual perspective: Burgundian precision, chalky tension, American clarity of expression. A wine without regional posturing, but with provenance – and thus perhaps one of the estate’s most contemporary wines.
That Kracher does not regard sweetness as a museum piece from the past is shown by the Eiswein Liliac & Kracher 2023 from Romania. Muscat Ottonel, Mädchentraube, Traminer – conceived aromatically, but executed precisely. Not an exotic sugar cocktail, but a wine with inner order. The same applies to the Rosenmuskateller 2022, the variety which the Krachers once “imported” from South Tyrol to Burgenland (or, more accurately, smuggled into the country). Here it becomes clear how much tradition is sometimes simply the sum of bold decisions.
At the end of the afternoon, the story that binds everything together came up: the legendary tasting in London in 1988. An entirely unknown Alois Kracher until then placed his wines alongside Château d’Yquem, the most famous sweet wine in the world – and won. Not a marketing trick, but conviction. Gerhard Kracher and I will recreate this tasting this year. For the WELT am SONNTAG. Not out of nostalgia, but out of relevance.
Because what Kracher shows today is more than a winery with a history. It is an operation that has understood that greatness does not lie in holding on, but in thinking forwards. And that sweet wine – when made properly – is not an anachronism, but a test of precision, patience and intellectual integrity in winegrowing.