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Food & Wine

Pannonian Alchemists: Signature Wines

Beyond the general differences between the sweet wine predicates, each winemaker also adds a unique signature to the wines.

The Neusiedlersee district's leading winemaker Alois Kracher puts the grape bunches, stems and all, through a gentle crusher producing a thick jammy mass of syrup, slippery grape skins, stems and seeds, while Heidi Schröck prefers to use whole berries only. Some winemakers like the complexity gained by maceration, while others, seeking more fruit and freshness, will press immediately after crushing. Pressing generally occurs in a gentle pneumatic press and is always a very slow process that takes several hours; the mash must be loosened between three pressings to coax murky viscous must to ooze out. The fermentation of an Ausbruch may cease after three months, whereas a Trockenbeerenauslese can ferment for over a year. With both wines, the winemaker can choose between fermentation vessels, and depending on the grape variety and desired style, the wine will be matured in large oak casks or new oak barrels.

In no other wine region in the world does noble rot attack grapes more consistently. While botrytis visits the great sweet wine areas of France and Germany only every few vintages, it is rare for the Neusiedlersee districts to have a year without it. Due to the certainty of the conditions, production of noble sweet wines is reliable and the supplies are abundant. In years where noble rot appears in other Austrian wine districts, wineries profit from the country's wide spread sweet winemaking expertise. Many estates, like Willi Opitz, also make other non-botrytized dessert wine specialties like Strohwein and Eiswein as well. Excellent sweet wines are always expensive to make, but Austrian sweet wines can still be found at a fraction of the price of their French and German counterparts.