Alois Kracher Ice Wine "Liliac & Kracher" (Transylvania) / 2023 / 375mL

Description:

The Liliac & Kracher Ice Wine 2023 is a genuinely sweet, low-alcohol dessert white from Transylvania in Romania, made from grapes left to freeze on the vine before pressing. Rich and honeyed, it stays lively rather than heavy, and the 375mL bottle is the right size for a wine you pour in small measures.

Aromas run to white peach, lychee and fresh pineapple, with candied citrus peel and a lick of honey behind them. The palate is thick and syrupy without being cloying, carrying dried apricot, quince paste and a faint floral note that lifts as the wine warms in the glass.

Concentration is the point here, and the acidity is what makes it work: a bright seam of lemon and green apple cuts straight through the sugar and keeps the finish clean and long. Texture is oily and slow-moving, the sort of wine that coats the glass, but it leaves the mouth refreshed rather than coated.

Serve it well chilled with blue cheese, a fruit tart, crème brûlée or a slab of pâté. It also holds its own against sharper desserts — lemon or passionfruit — where a softer sweet wine would collapse.

Half bottles evolve faster than 750mL formats, so this Transylvanian ice wine will show its secondary character sooner: drink from now to around 2033, with the fresh stone-fruit fruit at its most vivid over the next five years.