A little anecdote on the late, great 'Luis' Kracher and dry wine.
Boston-based importer Jorge Ordez asked him five years ago to visit Mlaga in southern Spain, Ordez's birthplace, and see the old, steep hillside slate vineyards where muscat of Alexandria is grown in the Axarqua area. He proposed to Kracher a joint venture to make sweet muscat wines in which Kracher would have total control of the winemaking. Luis accepted, but with one condition: he wanted to make one dry wine too, because he liked the levels of ripeness reached in that terroir (25 miles from Africa as the crow flies, BTW). Ordez was surprised because he hadn't even thought about a dry wine, of which there was no local tradition. But he accepted, of course. Unconvinced, but he wanted Kracher's expertise for the sweet wines, so, hey, let's humor the guy...
I've been drinking the 2006 Jorge Ordez Botani lately, and the wine is amazingly pure, light and mineral. No overt grapiness, none of the excesses of bitterness found in some muscats. At least on a par - in a different style - with the best dry muscats from Alsace, and that's surprising because of its geographic origin and because the larger-berried muscat of Alexandria usually produces less delicate wines than the small-berried muscat blanc petits grains. But Kracher obviously knew what he was doing, and it's a legacy that white wine fans in Spain can be thankful for. (His son makes the Botani now. He's a promising young winemaker.)
