Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
“other grapes”). For Sicily, try: Barbera**, Valle
dell'Acate**, and Duca di Salaparuta* (Bianca
di Valguarnera).
producers! In reality, Arneis was at the same
time also being replanted and studied by Gio-
vanni Negro in the Roero region. Interestingly
though, Arneis has always had ties to Pied-
mont's most famous wine: in fact, it used to be
called Nebbiolo Bianco, as it grows tall and
erect just like Nebbiolo. In centuries past it was
also very common to add a little arneis to Barolo
and even to barbera, both high-acid wines, to
soften things up. It was also planted in the vine-
yards along with red varieties, so that birds
would be attracted to the sweeter, earlier ripen-
ing but less pricey Arneis grapes, before turn-
ing their voracious attentions to Nebbiolo.
Sweet and low in acid, it's also an excellent table
grape. Unfortunately, the variety is not easy to
work with, as it is disease-prone; it is particu-
larly sensitive to pests of the
Lepidoptera
genus,
which perforate the berries and allow grey rot
to fester, though lately,
Scaphoideus titanus
and
the resulting esca disease have become a big
problem. These pest-related diffi culties are also
due to the cultivar's geographic home: the
Roero, located on the left bank of the Tanaro
River, has been particularly hit by insect prob-
lems in recent years.
The fi rst academic studies on Arneis date
back to the 1970s and were performed at the
enology school of Alba, led by Albino Morandi.
Morandi was one of the teachers of Roberto
Damonte, winemaker and owner (along with
his brother Massimo) of Malvirà, in my view
the best producer of Arneis wines, along with
Negro and Giovanni Almondo. Damonte thinks
Arneis is a fairly easy variety to work with
except for its sensitivity to diseases (among
which he numbers oidium) and a tendency to
oxidize. For this reason, Damonte believes that
extra care must be taken to avoid excessive oxy-
gen contact when working in the cellar, for
example, excessive stirring of the lees. Bruno
Giacosa, who despite being Italy's single great-
est red wine producer is also remarkably adept
at churning out delicious Arneis wines, vintage
after vintage, told me that “in reality, there was
never that much Arneis planted in the Roero,
or anywhere for that matter, because it's small-
Arneis
where it's found:
Piedmont.
national reg-
istry code number:
14.
color:
white.
In the 1980s, Arneis made Italy's most pop-
ular dry white wine, mainly on the strength of
Ceretto's iconic, beautifully labeled and bottled
Blangé bottling. Though detractors doubted
that this almost-too-good-to-be-true wine was
ever 100 percent Arneis—as Federico and Ales-
sandro Ceretto have told me time and again it
is—the fact remains that Arneis, thanks mainly
to that wine, took the country by storm. A sin-
gular turn of events for a grape that had up
until then almost always been made into a
sweet wine, and when made into a dry wine,
was considered nothing more than an after-
thought. Even when the arneis craze set in,
Arneis was still thought of and used as a work-
horse grape, though it has become clear in time
that the cultivar has thoroughbred potential.
The name
Arneis
derives from Renexij, the
ancient name of the locality Renesio di Canale:
in time this morphed into
Arnesio
(used at the
beginning of the twentieth century), and
fi nally,
Arneis.
It's not by chance that a high-
quality
cru
for this variety is Bric Renesio, a
specifi c site fi rst described in 1478. Interest-
ingly, in Piedmontese dialect, the word
arneis
is
also used to describe rascally individuals, those
who tend to get on everybody's nerves: “Just
like the older clones of Arneis, which yielded
poorly and irregularly and were a pain to work
with,” laughs Giovanni Almondo, one of the
best producers of Arneis today.
By the 1960s, Arneis had been reduced to
only a few rows of vines in the Langhe, and it
was only thanks to two producers, Alfredo Cur-
rado of the Vietti estate in Castiglione Falletto
and Bruno Giacosa of the eponymous estate in
Neive, that it didn't disappear altogether. How
ironic that a Piedmontese white wine would be
saved by two of the region's most famous Barolo
