(Manfred Klimek / Björn Grebner)
Yesterday afternoon at Gerhard Kracher’s in Illmitz was a wonderful moment. Not melodramatic, but remarkably down-to-earth – and precisely for that reason imbued with a quiet power, full of positive energy (which we urgently need in times like these).
Gerhard Kracher is 44 years old. At the age of 23, he took over the winery following the death of his father, Alois Kracher, that exceptional winemaker who had put Burgenland on the international map with its sweet wines and was awarded 96 to 100 points by Robert Parker on several occasions for his work. A legacy that could easily have crushed him. Kracher junior did the opposite. He paused, listened; and worked – initially alongside his grandfather and his 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: working with partners, and abroad too. Not a break, but an expansion. Not a distancing from the legend, but an intelligent continuation.
The most important wine of this visit was, unsurprisingly, the first to be poured: the Grande Cuvée 2005, the sweet wine that once inspired Parker to award a magical 100 points. Even today, two decades later, this wine does not come across as monumental, but rather as juicy, velvety and well-controlled. Density without heaviness, sweetness without sluggishness, an internal structure of low acidity and low salinity that nevertheless carries the wine with weight, rather than making it seem banal.
The Pinot Gris Reserve 2022 demonstrates that Kracher has long been capable of much more than just sweet wines. Dry, taut, coolly styled, with a seriousness that Pinot Gris so rarely achieves in Central Europe. No fatness, no flattery, but structure, length and substance. Utterly delicate, and once again that shellac-like salty note that the soils here pick up from the small salt lakes.
Equally consistent is the dry Cuvée K, made from Welschriesling, Chardonnay and Scheurebe: a wine that doesn’t set out to please everyone, yet intellectually plays the populist, rustic card as well – thanks to the Scheurebe. Multi-layered, full of tension, with an inner dynamism that makes it clear that here, someone understands wine as a precise craft – not as a stylistic reference. And yet it’s not overloaded – pure, unpretentious wine.
Particularly revealing was the 2022 St. Georg Chardonnay from the Leitha Mountains, produced in collaboration with Aldo Sohm. Sohm, a son of Tyrolean descent and a top international sommelier, has lived and worked in the USA for years, where he has played a key role in establishing European wine beyond folkloric stereotypes. This Chardonnay embodies this dual perspective: Burgundian precision, chalky tension, and American clarity of expression. A wine without regional pretence, but with a sense of origin – and thus perhaps one of the house’s most contemporary wines.
The fact that Kracher does not view sweetness as a relic of the past is demonstrated by the Liliac & Kracher 2023 ice wine from Romania. Muskat Ottonell, Mädchentraube, Traminer – aromatic in concept, yet precisely executed. Not an exotic sugary cocktail, but a wine with an inner order. The same goes for the 2022 Rosenmuskateller, the very variety that the Krachers once ‘imported’ (or rather, smuggled) from South Tyrol to Burgenland. This illustrates just how much tradition is sometimes simply the sum of bold decisions.
Towards the end of the afternoon, the story that ties everything together came up: the legendary 1988 tasting in London. Alois Kracher, a complete unknown at the time, presented his wines alongside Château d’Yquem, the world’s most famous sweet wine – and won. No marketing ploy, but sheer conviction. Gerhard Kracher and I will be recreating this tasting this year. For *WELT am SONNTAG*. Not out of nostalgia, but because it is still relevant today.
For what Kracher demonstrates today is more than just a winery with a history. It is an estate that has understood that greatness lies not in clinging to the past, but in thinking ahead. And that sweet wine – when made properly – is not an anachronism, but a touchstone for precision, patience and intellectual integrity in viticulture.