Vietti Roero Arneis 2025
£23.45
The wine
Alfredo Currado saved Arneis from near extinction, and this is the wine that shows why it was worth the effort. Delicate floral notes lead into citrus and melon fruit, with mineral overtones running underneath. Beautifully textured, balanced by freshness, and finished with an elegant almond note.
By the 1960s Arneis had fallen to a few scattered rows in the Roero, kept on mainly because its aromatic grapes distracted birds from the more valuable Nebbiolo nearby. Its name means something close to little rascal in Piedmontese, a reference to how awkward it is to grow. Currado gathered what was left, replanted it and bottled it varietally, and the Roero now has a white wine of its own because of it.
The producer
Vietti
View all Vietti winesVietti is one of the defining names of Piedmont, based in the village of Castiglione Falletto at the heart of Barolo. The family have grown grapes here since the nineteenth century, but the estate as we know it was shaped by Alfredo Currado, who married Luciana Vietti in 1957 and spent the next four decades changing what Piedmont thought possible.
Two things made his name. In 1961 he bottled Barolo from the Rocche di Castiglione vineyard on its own, one of the first single-cru Barolos ever released, at a time when almost everything was blended across the commune. The idea that individual sites deserved their own bottling is now orthodoxy; then it was heresy. He also rescued Arneis, the white grape of the Roero, which had fallen to a handful of rows and was days from disappearing altogether.
The range here runs from Roero Arneis and Timorasso through Barbera and Langhe Nebbiolo to seven Barolo crus and a Barbaresco, each farmed and vinified separately. Vietti labels have carried commissioned artwork since 1974, which is why no two look quite alike.
