Avignonesi, Vin Santo di Montepulciano, 1988 (375ml)

Avignonesi's Vin Santo is one of Italy's great cult sweet wines, and it earns the reputation through sheer obsession. White grapes (Malvasia, Grechetto and Trebbiano) are dried on mats for months, then fermented and aged for years in tiny sealed caratelli inoculated with the estate's century-old "madre" yeast, with a huge share of the liquid lost to evaporation. The result is a tiny production of intensely concentrated nectar. This 1988 comes from a private collection and is now fully mature, golden-amber and resolved.