Giovanni Almondo Le Rive del Bricco delle Ciliegie 2023

Each year, what is arguably Italy’s greatest white wine is made in quantities far too small to meet the demand. Only dozens, not hundreds, of cases are made. Only a fraction of those make it stateside (usually only enough to count on your hands). But for winemaker Domenico Almondo, that’s just fine.

In fact, that’s Domenico’s only goal in making this wine—to have it be considered the best white wine in the world. It’s not really a wine that’s priced to make any money and there’s far too little of it to possibly make a splash with the Michelin star set. Each year, we get a tiny amount of cases that I dole out to a small part of the list, just trying to spread it around.

The Gold Label “Le Rive” is made from the estate’s oldest single plot of vines within the already heralded Bricco Delle Ciliegie (“hill of cherries”). For the micro-cuvee of the estate’s flagship wine, only a fraction of the juice that is made is used for the final blend, with most of the rest of it sold off.