Designation for wines made from fully ripe and partially (but not necessarily) botrytised grapes, which are specially selected (picked out) during the grape harvest. Not only individual grapes are selected, but also manually and laboriously even individual berries. There are different wine laws in the individual countries to be allowed to call a wine Beerenauslese. The criteria are usually a minimum must weight and the condition of the grapes. In Germany and Austria, Beerenauslese is a special type of wine within the quality wine category "Prädikatsweine" (predicate wines).
Such wines are usually produced sweet. Due to the influence of botrytis, depending on the proportion of noble rotten berries, a varietal taste is only weakly or hardly pronounced at the expense of honey notes. In the Swiss Valais, Beerenauslese wines are known as Flétri, in Alsace as Sélection de grains nobles. The sweet wines from the French Sauternes area, such as the famous Château d'Yquem, correspond to a Beerenauslese or even a Trockenbeerenauslese, which is the next level in terms of must weight.