Beerenauslese

Beerenauslese is a rich, sweet wine style from Germany and Austria, made from individually selected, very ripe grapes, often affected by noble rot. Expect apricot, peach and citrus with honey, tropical fruit and spice, balanced by refreshing acidity. It’s brilliant with blue cheese, crème brûlée, cheesecake, fruit tarts and peach or apricot desserts.

Taste:

Sweet, concentrated and very much a small-glass situation.

Beerenauslese wines are intensely sweet and usually full of ripe fruit, with flavours of apricot, peach, citrus and tropical fruit often joined by honey, marmalade, flowers and warming spice.

Noble rot can add even more complexity, bringing concentrated dried-fruit and honeyed flavours into the mix.

Despite all that sugar, good Beerenauslese retains plenty of acidity. That sweet-and-sharp balance is what keeps each sip feeling vibrant rather than heavy.

The exact flavours depend on the grape used, with Riesling capable of producing particularly fresh, long-lived examples.

Basically, this is dessert wine that came prepared with its own credentials.

Food Pairings:

Beerenauslese is brilliant with desserts featuring fruit, cream, caramel and vanilla.

Try it with crème brûlée, cheesecake, peach tart, apricot tart, fruit tart, tarte tatin or panna cotta with fruit.

Peach, apricot and citrus-based desserts are particularly good matches, echoing flavours commonly found in the wine itself.

It’s also excellent with blue cheese, including Stilton and Roquefort, where the salty, powerful flavours balance the wine’s sweetness.

For something particularly indulgent, Beerenauslese can work beautifully with foie gras and pâté too.

As with most dessert wines, the golden rule is to make sure the wine is at least as sweet as the dessert. Beerenauslese has come extremely well prepared.

Similar Wines:

If you enjoy Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese takes concentration and sweetness even further, using intensely shrivelled grapes to produce some of Germany and Austria’s rarest sweet wines.

Sauternes offers another famous noble-rot style with honey, apricot and citrus flavours, while Tokaji brings its own legendary Hungarian take on intensely sweet wine.

Icewine achieves similar concentration through naturally frozen grapes rather than noble rot.

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More About Beerenauslese:

Beerenauslese translates roughly as “selected berry harvest” and is a recognised category within German and Austrian wine law.

The grapes are harvested individually at very high levels of ripeness and are frequently affected by Botrytis cinerea, or noble rot, which causes them to shrivel and concentrates their sugar, acidity and flavour.

Because only suitable berries are selected, production can be painstaking and yields are tiny. Beerenauslese also isn't necessarily produced every year, as the vineyard conditions have to be right.

The result is usually sold in smaller bottles and poured in smaller glasses.

Not because anyone is being stingy.

You'll understand after the first sip.