Trockenbeerenauslese

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Trockenbeerenauslese is a German 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, with a lot of the honeyed taste of the noble rot. The finest examples are made from the riesling grape, as this retains plenty of acidity even with the extreme ripeness, but other grape varieties can be used, and many are more prone to rot than riesling (such as Scheurebe, Ortega, Chardonnay, etc).

These wines are usually very rare and expensive, and the best are almost exclusively sold at the various German wine auctions. They are usually golden to deep golden in color, very thick and concentrated, and arguably can be aged almost indefinitely. This category is similar to, but much more concentrated than selection de grains nobles from Alsace or Sauternes from Bordeaux.

It is also used (since the 1960s) in Austria for the same type of wines. Most of TBA from Austria come from Neusiedlersee, Burgenland. This region known for its wide body and shallow lakes which lose more than half their volume due to evaporation. The mists created by these lakes provide very condusive micro climate condition for Noble Rot to attack grapes.

Also compare to the similar but less intense beerenauslese and to eiswein.

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