If you could roast a rose petal, it might smell like the sweet wine that Gerhard Kracher makes from Rosenmuskateller grapes. As your brain fumbles to put a name on the aroma, it mutates into rose petal ice cream and then becomes fresh rose when you tilt the glass and put a few drops on your tongue. Such is the magic Kracher works in Illmitz, the tiny town in Austria where he makes some of the world's greatest sweet wines, which can turn dessert into a sensory workout.

Illmitz lies on the southeastern side of Lake Neusiedl, which like the Dead Sea is an endorheic basin, one that retains water and provides for no drainage. The water that evaporates from the lake helps the grapes in Kracher's vineyards develop botrytis, the fungus that under the right conditions concentrates the sugars in grapes and allows them to develop flavors like the ones in Kracher's 1996 Grand Cuvee, which combines notes of soy sauce, caramel, dried apricots and long-roasted meat.

Read more at source: The Street