2006 TBA #2 Muscat Ottonel ZDS

Glazed dried apricots and candied melon rind are reflected in the nose of Kracher‘s green-gold 2006 #2 Muskat Ottonel Trockenbeerenauslese Zwischen den Seen. This offers a lot of delicacy and sheer refreshment for all of its sweetness (and 170 grams of residual sugar); a subtly waxy texture; and a greenhouse-like inner-mouth amalgam of foliage and flowers. The buoyant finish is cooling in its suggestions of honeydew melon, apricot nectar and aromatic green herbs. I suspect this will be best enjoyed over the next 2-3 years, although – unlike Luis Kracher himself – it may well live to good-naturedly make a fool of me, as he delighted in conspiring with his wines to do. The 2006s were the last wines Alois “Luis” Kracher lived to vinify, and his son Gerhard – who with his grandfather Alois will continue to manage the estate – brought them to completion. Vintages for nobly sweet wine in the Neusiedlersee’s Seewinkel district can generally be divided between those in which botrytis comes early (such as 2005 and – with a vengeance – 2007); those when it is late (like 2004); and those when it comes not at all (which – as witness 2003 – does entirely rule out the production of BA or TBA from shriveled grapes). In 2006, by contrast, there was beautiful botrytis early, late, and in-between, permitting the Krachers to harvest from mid-October to December. The dozen 2006 TBAs bottled here will doubtless be worthily compared to the 15, by now near-legendary, TBAs of 1995 – the first such extended, numbered series, from a vintage in which Alois Kracher found himself confronted with almost nothing but TBA. In 2006, a number of Auslesen were also bottled (a tradition Kracher revived in 2003), most of which were reviewed in issue 177. Importer: Vin Divino, Chicago, IL; tel. (773) 334-6700