The Cantine Colosi 2017 Malvasia delle Lipari Passito di Salina Na'jm (in a 500-milliliter bottle) is made according to the traditional approach in which the grapes are either air-dried on bamboo mats or they are left to dry on the vines before harvest. This process makes for extra intensity and flavor that is played forward with sweet apricot, honey and caramel. This vintage is not especially complex, but it finds a good comfort zone with ample sweetness and generous fruit.

The 2013 Malvasia delle Lipari Passito di Salina Na'jm (500 milliliters) is a viscous and sticky dessert wine with pronounced aromas of marron glacé, honey-covered almond and sun-dried apricot. The wine feels thick on the palate, and it offers a long trail of sugary sweetness that is thick and dense but not cloying.

Made with 95% Malvasia delle Lipari and 5% Corinto Nero, the 2010 Malvasia delle Lipari Passito shows incredible improvement since the last time I tasted this wine. The bouquet offers a pretty hint of candied fruit with apricot and honey. But there is also a salty note of sea breeze or crushed oyster shell that makes this Passito dessert wine so distinctive.

The 2009 Malvasia delle Lipari Passito (750 milliliter) is an oddly balanced wine with volcanic notes of crushed mineral, sulfur stone and resin. Candied fruit aromas are packed in tight at the back. The wine tastes very sweet and feels weighed down by too much concentrated sugar.

Made with sweetly fragrant Malvasia grapes from the tiny island of Salina off the northern coast of Sicily, this Passito dessert wine opens with all the intensity you’d expect of sunny southern Italy. The wine sports a luminous amber color and aromas of candied fruit or orange rind, dried mint, touches of root beer and even a hint of white licorice. ——M.L.(12/31/2010)—— 88