Passito / Recioto (dried-grape sweet wine)

Passito is the Italian family of sweet wines made from grapes dried after harvest by the appassimento method — bunches laid out to shrivel for weeks or months so their sugar, acid and flavour concentrate before pressing. Where Amarone ferments the same dried-grape must all the way to dryness, a passito is stopped while sweet, giving a rich dessert wine of raisin, dried fig, apricot, honey and candied peel. The style spans the whole peninsula and islands: red Recioto della Valpolicella in the Veneto (Amarone's sweet ancestor), Tuscan Vin Santo, Recioto di Soave, Sagrantino Passito of Umbria, and the sun-dried whites of the islands — Passito di Pantelleria from Zibibbo (Muscat of Alexandria) and Malvasia delle Lipari. Typically 12 to 15 percent alcohol with substantial residual sugar, passito is a small-pour dessert and meditation wine, poured with dry biscotti, blue cheese, dried fruit and tarts.