German
In 2015, brothers Christian (along with his wife Anna), Axel, and Felix decided to found the KRACK sparkling wine house and focus entirely on the production of sparkling wine. The know-how for this had long been present at their parents’ winery, as their father Bernhard had long been a well-established figure in Deidesheim as a contract sparkling wine producer under the name “Sektkellerei Am Turm.” Nevertheless, it was a bold move, given that producing sparkling wine requires patience, as the results only become apparent many years after the harvest, with enormous delays. With his austere and straightforward sparkling wines, Christian Krack has demonstrated that he possesses precisely this intuition and has established himself alongside Raumland, Griesel, and others as a leading figure among traditional sparkling wine producers.
Heumarktstraße 20
67146 Deidesheim, Germany
Phone +49 6326 989030
Winery Size 9 ha
The Krack family cultivates all of its vineyards—both its own and those it leases—in and around Ruppertsberg and Deidesheim using natural methods. The most important vineyard site is Langenmorgen, but the grapes in all other plots are also harvested by hand by the family’s own team. Christian takes a very purist approach to the vinification of the base wines: no pre-selection, early harvest, whole-cluster pressing, and pressing is done using an old horizontal press that essentially functions like a basket press. As in Champagne, only the “tête de cuvée”—the first, very clear and precise portion of the press juice that flows out most easily—is used, while the “taille” is reserved solely for sparkling wine. The base wines are fermented in neutral wooden barrels ranging in size from 300 to 1,500 liters, followed by aging on the lees for about 10 months. Aging takes place without sulfur so that malolactic fermentation occurs in all wines and initial development begins while they are still in the barrel. This is followed by secondary fermentation in the bottle, followed by at least 20 months of aging on the lees before the wine is finally shaken by hand and disgorged.