Roero Arneis, Matteo Correggia 2022

This 100% Arneis is crisp and delicious! If you like Pinot Grigio, or even Sauvignon Blanc, you must try this wine. Bright citrus fruit and a bit of green apple are rounded out by just enough creamy texture from extended aging on the lees. This is a before dinner sipper as much as it is the perfect pairing for your first course!

In the Piedmontese dialect, "Arneis" means "little rascal," and this grape gets its name for being extremely difficult to work with. Arneis grapes start out with so much acid that they would pucker even the most experienced Sour Patch Kids enthusiast. But as the grapes ripen, the acid lessens and the inner character of the fruit begins to come through. Finding the perfect balance between acid and ripeness is what makes this rascal such a tough nut to crack. At Matteo Correggia, they've solved this problem by harvesting twice! The first pass is to harvest the grapes that are just ripe enough, but still have plenty of their natural acidity. The second time picking, the ripeness has reached full maturity, but the acid has nearly depleted. When you combine the two harvests, you get a wine that is truly something greater than the sum of its parts!

About the Winery

Matteo Correggia was a true visionary in Roero, Italy. He saw the potential of his land before many others and worked hard to put it on the map. Although Matteo passed away many years ago, his children and widow have taken over the family business, and his son, Giovanni, now runs the show!

Roero is a small town to the north of the more famous Piedmont wine regions, Barolo and Barbaresco, but more importantly, it is on the other side of the Po river, and its soils are much younger. Even more importantly, those soils are loaded with sand. And seashells! When you come to the store, ask us about the seashells we saw when we visited this wonderful place in 2013. Sand has a tendency to bring out the aromatics of wine grapes, especially when compared with the clay soils of Barolo and Barbaresco. So even though the grapes grown in this commune are the same ones grown in other parts of northern Italy, their expression is more exuberant, and in our eyes, more enticing!