A 2005 Zweigelt Auslese can be many things – the genre is hardly fixed! In this instance, we have a wine of 13.5% alcohol and only 76 grams of residual sugar that was fermented and then aged for 15 months in used barriques. The color is a pale, rusty garnet. Hints of ripe cherry and grenadine on the nose are forced to compete on the palate with lanolin and resin from the wood. In the finish, suggestions of cracked black pepper, cherry pit, coriander, cinnamon, and orange rind add interest, and there is an attractive brashness of fruit that breaks entirely free from the barrel (with the sweetness scarcely noticeable), and the faint hint of heat frankly fits the personality of the finish. I would plan to experiment with this wine at table over the next couple of years. The inspiring and otherwise irrepressible Alois “Luis” Kracher died last December 5, after a nearly year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. His son Gerhard, 27, and still-active father will continue the work of this exemplary estate. Note: I tasted the Kracher wines of 2005 and 2006 for the reviews above this Spring, and the 2004s in late 2007 and again this Spring. Kracher was restrained in his early judgment of the challenging 2004 vintage, in which he could not start picking noble rot until November, and continued until Christmas. “The first selections were wonderful; the second passage classic, good; the third – kaput,” was how he described it. “From two months of work,” he continued, “we netted 6,000 liters of quality T.B.A.,” from which he promises a modest-sized collection so that – as he puts it – he wouldn’t have to apologize for a vintage that is good but not great. I don’t believe that this was a tactical confession on his part. Kracher was genuinely surprised by the quality that emerged as his 2004 collection evolved, and in the end, he bottled the same number of Trockenbeerenauslesen – ten – as in the manifestly more classic botrytis vintage of 2005.Importer: Vin Divino, Chicago, IL; tel. (773) 334-6700
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