German Wine Labels: what they mean

Grapes you may know:

Quality

Well known wines:

Degrees of sweetness 

Auslese

Spatlese

sparkling - sekt
Trockenbeerenauslese
German - English
trocken - dry
beeren - berries (grapes)
aus - from
lese - harvest
Adapted (shortened and simplified into easy to understand and remember language) from Wiki:

• Deutscher Tafelwein (German table wine) is mostly consumed in the country and not exported. Used for blended wines that cannot be Qualitätswein.
• Deutscher Landwein (German country wine) comes from a larger designation and again doesn't play an important role in the export market.
• Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete (QbA) wines from a defined appellation except Liebfraumilch, which can be blended from several regions and still be called Qualitätswein.
• Prädikatswein, recently (2007) renamed from Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (QmP) wines made from grapes of higher ripeness. As ripeness increases, the fruit characteristics and price increase. Categories within Prädikatswein are Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese, Trockenbeerenauslese and Eiswein. These categories within Prädikatswein are solely linked to minimum requirements of potential alcohol. These may correlate with harvest time, but there are no longer legally defined harvest time restrictions.
  • Kabinett wines are made from grapes that have achieved minimum defined potential alcohol levels. Minimum requirements differ by region and grape variety. Kabinett is the first level of reserve grape selection.
  • Spätlese wines ("late harvest") are made from grapes that achieve minimum defined potential alcohol levels. Those minimum requirements differ by region and grape varietal. Spatlese is the second level of reserve grape selection.
  • Auslese wines ("select harvest") are made from grapes that have achieved minimum defined potential alcohol levels. Minimum requirements differ by region and grape varietal. Auslese is the third level of reserve grape selection.
  • Beerenauslese wines ("berry selection") are made from grapes that have achieved minimum defined potential alcohol levels. The concentration of the grape juice may have been caused/helped by a fungus Botrytis, which pierces the grape skin forcing water to drip out and remaining elements to concentrate. Due to the high potential alcohol level required for this category of ripeness, these wines are usually made into sweet wines and can make good dessert wines.
  • Trockenbeerenauslese wines ("dry berries selection") are made from grapes of an even higher potential alcohol level, generally reachable only with the help of Botrytis. The grapes used for Trockenbeerenauslese have reached an even more raisin-like state than those used for Beerenauslese. Due to the high concentration of sugar in the raisin-like grape, these wines can only be made in a sweet style and make extremely sweet, concentrated and usually quite expensive wines.
  • Eiswein (ice wine) wine is made grapes that freeze naturally on the vine and have to reach the same potential alcohol level as Beerenauslese. The grapes are harvested and pressed in the frozen state. The ice stays in the press during pressing and hence a concentrated juice flows off the press leading to higher potential alcohol levels, which in turn generally result in sweet wines due to the high potential alcohol. The taste differs from the other high-level wines since Botrytis infection is usually lower, ideally completely absent.

Abbreviated to TBA


Ice Wine - eiswein

Terms identifying the grower and producers of the wine:

• Weingut refers to a wine growing and producing estate.
• Weinkellerei refers to a bottling facility, a bottler or shipper.
• Winzergenossenschaft refers to a winemaking cooperative.
• Gutsabfüllung refers to a grower/producer wine that is estate bottled.
• Abfüller refers to a bottler or shipper.

To translate your own wine bottle label use Googletranslate
For more details on a website where you can hover over the parts of a wine label and read description:
http://www.germanwineusa.com/press-trade/read-wine-label.html

(This post under construction being updated.)