Riesling - Hochgewachs

This is a strange and unfamiliar designation for German wines. I only met it in a Mosel Riesling in a shop in my neighbourhood recently. It was not easy to find out about it. Apparently this is a designation for Riesling only, which sits at the top of the QbA scale. In order to qualify for this, the grapes have to reach a ripeness that is 1.5% potential alcohol above the minimum (for Kabinett in that subregion) before chaptalisation and reach 3 (out of 5) on the official quality scale. This allows the better growers to make QbA wines which from must at Kabinett level but which they deem not good enough to make as say a Kabinett wine according to their own standards. Having added sugar restricts them to sell it as a QbA, but this latter category allows them to set these apart from the masses of Liebfraumilch and the like. The "back label" of the above wine yielded a little more information - it is from the grosslage of Scharzberg from the village of Ockfen on the Saar.