Arneis is a Piedmontese white grape, grown mainly in the Roero and the Langhe. In the 1960s it was close to disappearing: low-yielding, awkward in the vineyard and in the cellar, it was kept in the rows beside Nebbiolo more to draw birds away from the red grapes than to make wine in its own right. In Piedmontese, arneis means something close to "little rascal", and the name describes exactly that reputation.
It served another purpose too: a small proportion of Arneis softened Nebbiolo's hardness, so much so that one of its old local names was "nebbiolo bianco", white Nebbiolo. Its reintroduction as a varietal wine from the late 1960s is one of Piedmont's successful varietal rescues.
Today it appears in three separate appellations — Roero Arneis DOCG, Langhe Arneis DOC and Terre Alfieri Arneis DOCG — which is why it earns a page of its own: none of them contains all of it. In the glass it gives a medium-bodied white of pear, white flowers and almond, with moderate acidity. That last point is the one to know before buying: this is not a white for keeping, it is a white to drink young.
