Beerenauslese
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Beerenauslese is a German wine term and type of dessert wine meaning "selected berries". Often abbreviated to BA, it is one of the German wine classification levels in the QmP category.
A wine with beerenauslese on the label means that the grapes have been individually picked, and are affected at least partially with noble rot. It also means that the wine had at least a specified minimum must weight at harvest. These wines are typically very sweet and rich, and age extremely well. The finest examples 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 vinyards with appropriate conditions, so are very expensive. An exception to this is beerenauslesen produced from grapes such as Ortega, which have extremely high sugar content, but little of the character of more noble grapes.
This category is roughly equivalent to vendange tardive in Alsace.