It's Christmas and my mother-in-law and I cleared out some rarities in my late father-in-law's wine cellar. Here we found a bottle of a 1971 (fantastic wine year by the way) Gewürtztraminer Beerenauslese, Osthofener Liebenberg from Weingut Rudolf Strauch & Sohn. This wine won a gold prize and the Grosser Preis Bundesweinprämierung 1974.Beerenauslese is type of dessert wine meaning "selected berries". The grapes have been individually picked, and mostly are affected with noble rot. It also means that the wine had at least a specified minimum must weight at harvest, 110-128 ºÖchsle in Germany, depending on the wine-growing region and grape variety. Typically very sweet and rich it ages very well. The finest specimens are made from the riesling grape, as this retains significant acidity even with the extreme ripeness. Other grapes are used but can often have much lower acidity levels, resulting in a less well balanced wine that simply tastes very sweet.These wines are produced in very small quantities when the weather is suitable for the noble rot to form and only in vineyards with appropriate conditions, so they are very expensive. An exception to this is beerenauslesen produced from grapes such as Ortega, Huxelrebe which have extremely high sugar content, but less of the extract and noble rot characters.
I will let you know how it tasted after Christmas.
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