Straw wine, or raisin wine, is a wine made from grapes that have been dried off the vine to concentrate their juice. Under the classic method, after a careful hand harvest, selected bunches of ripe grapes will be laid out on mats in full sun (originally the mats were made of straw, but these days the plastic nets used for the olive harvest are likely to be used). This drying will probably be done on well exposed terraces somewhere near the winepress and the drying process will take around a week or longer.

Under less labour intensive versions of the technique, easily portable racks might be used instead of mats or nets, or the grapes are left lying on the ground beneath the grape vines, or even left hanging on the vine with the vine-arm cut or the stem twisted. Technically speaking the grapes must be cut off from the vine in order for the wine to be a 'straw wine'. If the grapes are just left to over-ripen before being harvested, even if this is to the point of raisining, this is a late harvest wine.

The exact technique used varies according to local conditions, traditions and increasingly modern innovations. In some regions the grapes are laid first in the sun and later covered or they are covered at night to protect them against the morning dew. In cooler, damper regions, the entire drying process takes place indoors in huts, attics or greenhouses with the bunches lying on racks or hanging up with good air circulation.

Straw wines are typically sweet to very sweet white wines, similar in density and sweetness to Sauternes but potentially sweeter. They are capable of long ageing. The low yields and labour-intensive production method means that they are quite expensive. Around Verona red grapes are dried, and are fermented in two different ways to make a strong dry red wine (Amarone) and a sweet red wine (Recioto della Valpolicella).

The technique dates back to pre-Classical times with wines becoming fashionable in Roman times and in late Medieval/Renaissance Europe when wines such as Malmsey ('Malvasia' originally from Greece) and Candia (from Crete) were highly sought after. Traditionally, most production of these wines has been in Greece, the islands of Sicily, Cyprus, Northern Italy and the French Alps. However, producers in other areas now use the method as well.

Excavations in Cyprus on the Neolithic site at Erimi have revealed that sweet wine was made there some 6000 years ago. This is the earliest appearance of sweet wine in the Mediterranean region. A wine grape wine known as the Cypriot Manna (or Nama). Similar principles were used to make the medieval Cypriot wine Commandaria, which is still produced today.

References to raisin-wine production in ancient Israel appear both on jar fragments from Tel Lachish and in talmudic literature from the early centuries AD.

The process of making raisin wines was described by the Greek poet Hesiod in mainland Greece around 800 BC. Various Mediterranean raisin wines were described in the first century AD by Columella and Pliny the Elder. Pliny uses the Greek term for honey wine for the following raisin wine: