Wine of the week: a hauntingly attractive arneis

The wines from this little-known region of Italy are an absolute bargain, says Matthew Jukes.

Matthew Jukes
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2010 Roero Arneis, Perdaudin, Negro, Piedmont, Italy (about £16.75, Great Western Wine, 01225-322810; SWIG, 08000 272272; Cambridge Wine Merchants, 01223-568993).

At a recent wine tasting, I was zooming along the bottles in time-honoured style waiting for serious wines to jump out and catch my attention when the Serra Lupini Arneis from Negro stopped me in my tracks.

I don't usually talk to the producers at these events, preferring to make my own notes and not get waylaid, but I had to ask Emanuela Negro (daughter of the owner Giovanni) to tell me a little more about her wines. Serra Lupini is their more forward, lighter arneis (meaning little rascal'!) and it was breathtakingly pretty, with delicate stone fruit notes and a delicious, silky texture.

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When I moved onto the Perdaudin version (for only a few quid more), I was floored. Planted on exclusively sandy soils, rich in fossil shells, these slightly older vines have yielded the most hauntingly attractive arneis I have ever tasted.

Because these wines, and for that matter this region, are little known, they are still an absolute bargain. Think of a Premier Cru chablis-shaped wine with more complexity and restraint than any unoaked chardonnay could muster and you are half way to the undisputable excellence of this wine.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (www.matthewjukes.com).

Matthew Jukes
Matthew Jukes

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.  

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’.  He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner. 

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy.  His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.

 

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