Weinlaubenhof Kracher, Illmitz

The name that put Illmitz on the map, and the estate every other house in the Seewinkel gets measured against. Alois Kracher the younger spent the 1990s demonstrating that Illmitz could produce sweet wine at the level of Sauternes and Tokaji, and largely by force of results he made Austrian botrytis wine something the rest of the world paid attention to. His son Gerhard runs the estate now. Visited on 7 November 2025, separately from Martiniloben.

The range splits into two lines, which is the first thing to understand about Kracher:

• Zwischen den Seen, meaning between the lakes, is raised in large neutral cooperage. The fruit and the botrytis are the subject.
• Nouvelle Vague is barrique-aged, so there is oak in the equation.

Both are numbered by Nummer within each vintage rather than named, roughly in ascending order of concentration.

Four Zwischen den Seen Trockenbeerenauslesen were open, and lining them up made the case for cellaring these wines better than any argument could: a Welschriesling and a Scheurebe from 2022, both pale gold, next to a 2010 and a 2005 that had gone amber and then close to tea-brown.

We came away with four wines spanning a factor of ten in price: an eleven euro Cuvée Spätlese, a Cuvée Beerenauslese, a Spätlese Rosé, and the 2010 Scheurebe Trockenbeerenauslese out of the Zwischen den Seen range at a hundred and six euros. The 2010 is the reason that vertical mattered: it is the vintage that sat amber between the pale 2022s and the tea-brown 2005, which is the argument for cellaring these wines made in one flight.