The German white wine known as Hock is cheap, tastes like wine and has a low alcohol content of just 9%. If you can get past the old-fashioned wine bottles with label designs that seemed designed to put you off, and topped with cheap looking screwcaps, then inside you’ll find some light and fruity wine.
This is mass-produced Riesling with a sweet edge that many enjoyed during the 1970s when that was pretty much all the wine that you could get in the UK, and it’s still worth a try if you like your wines light and medium-sweet.
Hock wine is actually an English invention, being the name we gave to all German wines coming from the vineyards around the town of Hochheim am Main (not to be confused with the German town Hockenheim, which is 60 miles south and famous for its motor racing circuit).
Hock has fallen in and out of fashion over the centuries: seen as sophisticated in the 1600s, by 1700s gin had replaced it, gaining favour again in the 1800s when German Hanoverians became British kings and queens and finally being replaced in the 1980s by reliably tasty Australian wines. But it’s still around and is not going away. So is it worth buying?
It is if you head straight for Tesco’s new Blaumeister Hock at just £4. Getting a maximum 5-star rating, this wine tastes like a sweetened New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. Which is a massive step up from the Tesco own-label Hock it replaced, which I reviewed a couple of years ago that was lucky to get 1-star rating.
The Blaumeister range also includes a Liebfraumilch and a Riesling that both rate at 3-stars but the Hock is the best of the bunch.
Drinking Hock couldn’t be simpler. Enjoy it really cold if you want to keep the sweet taste under control. And you could even use a specially designed Hock wine glass (small dumpy wine glasses that are either brown or green). If you want to up the fruity flavours even more then turn any left-overs into a Hock Cup Cocktail. A 1950s recipe suggests adding soda water, sugar syrup and pineapple slices then serving over ice.
Or you could just enjoy the wine as it is.
Wineuncorked.co.uk recommends
£4 Tesco
This tastes like a sweetened New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc with its fresh gooseberry and lime flavours that have been sprinkled with sugar. Why can’t all supermarket German Hocks tastes as good as this? Great value at just £4. Move over New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
£4.39 Morrisons
This is mass-produced Riesling with a sweet edge that’s still worth a try if you like your wines light and medium-sweet. Drink well-chilled to keep the sweetness under control.
£4.20 Co-op
It tastes of apple pie with a touch of pear and a sprinkle of sugar. Innocuous but pleasant enough. At just 9% alcohol this is a wine that would be a great choice for summer lunches with old friends where you’re looking for a wine that will suit most people’s taste preferences without offending anybody.
£3.79 Tesco
Tesco’s Blaumeister brand Liebfraumilch is Price Matched to the Aldi version at £3.79. So both are cheap, but are they great value? The slight aspirin after-taste is there though, as with some other cheap wines and also zero-alcohol wines.
£5 Tesco
A quaffable but unexciting wine and doesn’t live up to the label’s promise of “exotic” flavours. There’s flavours of baked apples and pineapple with a bit of banana that make this nice enough and at just £5 it’s great value. But hang on, are there other German Rieslings at £5 a bottle? Look to Asda and you’ll find their own-label Winemaker’s Choice Riesling at £4.90 but that’s about it - Aldi’s Blutengarten Riesling at £5.99 is no longer available sadly. So £5 is great value if it’s a Riesling you’re after.
