The excellent 2014 Passito di Pantelleria Ben Ryé (375 ml) opens to beautiful intensity and irresistible richness. The wine is sweet and generous with candied fruit, honey, marzipan, brown sugar and apricot. This celebrated Sicilian dessert wine offers a luminous golden color with amber highlights. In the mouth, it exhibits soft lines and deep layers of sun-ripened fruit. Ben Ryé is a wine with a proven track record of aging 20 years or more.

(375 ml.) Bright amber-gold. Penetrating aromas of aromatic spices and tropical fruit, complicated by honey and peach nectar. Saline and brightly acid, showing lovely lift to the rich, sweet flavors of spicy stone fruit, mango and grilled plantain. Long, rich and ripe but also very precise, showcasing lovely balance; I would have never guessed this has 199 g/L of residual sugar (the 7.9 g/L total acidity helped fool me). Strikes me as a much more freshly and lightly styled wine than some past vintages of Ben Ryé, but each will have its fans.