One Good Bottle: Tuscan Vin Santo

At its finest, the richly aromatic Tuscan dessert wine known as vin santo—literally, holy wine—is an alluring amber drink worthy of its name. One of the noblest examples is Avignonesi Vin Santo di Montepulciano ($170), a complex wine with lingering flavors of dried figs, apricots, almonds, tobacco, and hints of citrus and vanilla. The winemaker Paolo Trappolini follows the time-honored method in making this specialty, drying white malvasia, trebbiano, and grechetto grapes on straw mats, then pressing the wine and aging it for a decade or more in small oak barrels. Tuscans serve vin santo at the end of a meal with biscotti, but it's equally seductive as an aperitif, partnered with aged pecorino.