The difference between a liquefying pile of rotten grapes and the raw material for one of the most precious fluids in the enological universe is surprisingly small. The tiny agent of this dramatic divergence is a filamentous fungus called Botrytis cinerea (it’s the asexual spore-forming version of Botryotinia fuckeliana, but we’ll just call it botrytis). And all that separates a highly prized wine from something you wouldn’t want to step in is a fluke of meteorology. Humid autumn mornings activate the botrytis, which sends its mycelia into a few healthy white wine grapes so it can chow down on the sugars and acids. That part happens pretty often in plenty of places. If the process remains unchecked—if it stays cool and damp during the day—the mold will destroy the fruit. But there are a few wine regions blessed, in some years, with the crucial second part of the equation: warm, dry afternoons. As the humidity drops, the fungus slows its external activity while continuing to grow inside the grapes; they start to lose moisture and their flavors become more concentrated. Assuming that the winemaker is able to keep the birds from eating all his grapes, and that he can press enough juice out of the fruit—which has to be harvested by hand, a process that requires multiple passes through the vineyard over as many as ten weeks—and can then get that juice to ferment despite its high sugar content (which inhibits the yeast), and if he can keep the wine from refermenting or developing bacterial problems in the cellar, well, then he’s got a pretty good chance of making something spectacular.
The most famous botrytized dessert wines come from Bordeaux (Sauternes), northeast Hungary (Tokay), and Germany (Trockenbeerenauslese). In those regions, ideal conditions for widespread noble rot—as the good stuff is called to distinguish it from the decidedly ignoble gray rot—occur on average only two or three times a decade. By contrast, the vineyards on the shores of Austria’s Neusiedler Lake, a wild landscape in the state of Burgenland, barely 45 minutes from downtown Vienna, sees more like eight excellent botrytis infections a decade. The best sweet wines made there are as good as any of their more famous sticky cousins.
Neusiedler lake is a large, shallow body of water. Its eastern shore is one of the windiest areas in inland Europe (much to the delight of the many windsurfers who fly back and forth across the chop); the seemingly endless sea of reeds ringing its shallow waters are in constant, hypnotic motion. Northern Burgenland also happens to be the warmest part of Austria, and the 123-square-mile body of water, which evaporates at the astounding rate of nearly half an inch a day, further moderates temperatures. All this adds up to a long and relatively warm growing season: ideal conditions for grapes, and hog heaven for botrytis.
In 1943, Alois Kracher started farming ten acres here at age 15. At the time it was the poorest region of Austria. He raised chickens and grew all sorts of vegetables, but he didn’t like the work. He did, however, like growing grapes. So he took a second job with a butcher, saved his money, sold a chunk of farmland that wasn’t suited to viticulture, and eventually bought additional vineyard property. Everyone told him he was crazy. They said the same when he started making and bottling his wines himself. Back then, virtually all the grapes in the area were sold to the local cooperative, and the wine was nothing special. But Kracher recognized that the climate was perfect for making sweet wine, and he made some great ones. It took his son, also named Alois but called Luis, to persuade the rest of the world.
In 1981, the 22-year-old Luis started to work alongside his father in the vineyard and the winery, traveling when he could to some of the other great sweet-wine regions to see how things were done there. He kept his full-time job in the pharmaceutical industry until 1991, when he realized that it wasn’t going to be enough just to make great wine; he would also have to spread the word. Along the way he figured out how to soften the economic blow of those rare years when the botrytis didn’t come, by starting a wine import company. And he partnered with some of Austria’s best food producers to make wine jellies (Staud’s), chocolates filled with wine jelly (Tiroler Edle), vinegar (Gölles), and cheese aged with his wine (Schärdinger).
But the main focus has always been the wine. In a great year, the Krachers might produce nearly two dozen different bottlings, including a few dry wines. The range of sweet wines runs from a nonvintage blend (just introduced in a minibottle that holds two glasses) to something called Noble Wine, a very limited selection of the most concentrated lots from 2002. (Austrian authorities categorize the bottling as “grape juice containing alcohol” because the alcohol, at 4 percent, is below that required for a wine.) What all Kracher wines share, at every level of complexity and price, is balance. Despite the sweetness and lush texture, there’s always enough acidity to keep the wine from being cloying.
In recent years, Luis’s ponytailed son, Gerhard, who is as laid-back as his father is intense, has begun to share the workload. The 25-year-old is an economics student, though he’s too busy at the winery these days to go to school. And, Alois, now 77, still tends the vineyards. Each generation has raised the bar. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room for improvement in these magnificent wines, but then again, not so long ago, a lot of people thought chickens and vegetables were the only possibilities for this place.
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