2016 Aeris Wines Etna Etna Rosso Centenari

The 100% Carricante 2016 Etna Bianco Superiore is terrific, with a rich, complex bouquet of honeyed herbs, green almonds, salted pork, and Meyer lemons. It has a distinct salinity on the palate and is medium-bodied, has a rich, layered texture, high yet integrated acidity, and a clean, dry finish. White wine for tapas does not get better. It’s great today, yet I suspect this will have an interesting evolution over the coming decade or more.

The Aeris 2016 Etna Bianco Superiore is a beautifully crisp and luminous white wine with fresh lemon and delicate white fruit with a marine layer and sprinklings of crushed mineral or sea salt. The quality of the bouquet is exact and precise, and that's exactly what you should look for in a white wine from the Sicilian volcano. The Carricante grape is one with a longer-term vision. Its lean and streamlined mouthfeel will take on more volume with time, and the bouquet will add extra layers of aniseed and petrol. Give this wine an extra year or two.

Luminous pale yellow. Delicate but deep and very pure aromas of white flowers, lemon, and minerals with just a hint of almond paste for added complexity. Archetypal Carricante nose. Then boasts a delightful acid-sugar balance in the mouth, with a noble, tannic mouthfeel and lively acidity extending the floral and pomaceous orchard fruit flavors on the long, nuanced lemony back end. In this outstanding Etna Bianco Superiore, Carricante’s typically sharp lemony note is buffered by a noteworthy sweet herb component that does not camouflage Carricante’s personality. A very impressive, standout complex white that is still very young; easily one of the best Italian white wines of the 2016 vintage. (ID) 96+