Trockenbeerenauslese
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Trockenbeerenauslese is a German and Austrian wine term and type of dessert wine meaning "selected dried berries." Often abbreviated to TBA, it is one of the German wine classification levels in the QmP category and the one requiring the highest must weight.
This means that the grapes have been individually picked and are shrivelled with noble rot, nearly to the point of being a raisin. They are therefore very sweet and rich, frequently with a lot of caramel and honey bouquet and distinctive aroma of the noble rot. The finest examples are made from the riesling grape, as this retains plenty of acidity even at the extreme ripeness, but other grape varieties can be used, and many are more prone to rot than riesling (such as Scheurebe, Ortega, Chardonnay, Traminer, etc).
These wines are usually very rare and expensive, and some of the best are almost exclusively sold at the various German wine auctions. They are usually golden to deep golden in colour, very thick and concentrated, and arguably can be aged almost indefinitely. The style is similar to, but much more concentrated than, selection de grains nobles from Alsace or Sauternes from Bordeaux.
The same term has also been used since the 1960s in Austria for the same type of wines. Most TBA wines from Austria come from Neusiedlersee, Burgenland. Especially in Rust and St. Margarethen, wine of exceptionally good quality can be found. This region is known for its wide and shallow lakes which can lose more than half their volume due to evaporation. The mists created by these lakes provide a very conducive climate for Noble Rot to shrivel grapes.
Also compare to the similar but less intense beerenauslese and to eiswein.
You may wish to also examine the Öchsle scale. Many people believe, Trockenbeerenauslese to be superior to Eiswein for one reason because of the inherent noble rot possibilities which also yield higher sugar/specific gravity/grape must. Eiswein=clean sugar, TBA=complex sugar/age? The reader may also wish to personally compare a fine TBA to a fine Sauternes, if given the chance.