2017 Vin San Giusto Vino Bianco Passito

Another little masterpiece from San Giusto a Rentennano is the 2017 Vin San Giusto in a diminutive 375-millimeter bottle. This organic dessert wine is a blend of 90% Malvasia and 10% Trebbiano. It opens to rich, sugar-filled flavors that are syrupy. They recall brown sugar and maple syrup. Rather than pour out of the bottle, the contents plop out. The wine has a dark amber color and thick texture—your fingers stick together after you handle the bottle. The wine spends six years in chestnut and oak barrels measuring 60 to 100 liters. These small containers are put under roof rafters, as tradition dictates, in an area with good airflow and diurnal shifts that the wine needs as it continues its aging process. Fermentation kicks off with traditional mother yeasts that the estate carefully maintains from vintage to vintage. Each barrel, or caratello, is sealed with wax and contains remains of the estate's own "mother," or the sediments from native yeast and microorganisms that have been preserved for decades, sometimes over centuries. This is an indestructible sweet wine that will last many years. Only 2,592 bottles were made, and the alcohol content is a mere 9.5%.