hock wine

Hock wine is a generic historic category for the somewhat delicately sweet German wine the name of which is a contraction and transliteration for “Hochheimer” meaning from Hochheim, the town around which hock wine was traditionally made. It is considered a variety of Rhine wine, as is bottled in long-necked bottles with gracefully-sloping shoulders. While there are exceptions, it is almost always a white wine. As the popularity of this wine variety grew, other geographic regions also used the term for their similarly-styled wines. Today the name is infrequently used and is virtually synonymous with “Rhine” or “Riesling” as a term for wine without further pedigree from the Rhine region.