2020 Cornarea Arneis Roero DOCG Piemonte

WSI94 Its extreme elegance immediately justifies the reasons why this original Piedmontese wine has been so successful.
The colour is straw yellow. Original and intense aroma of white flowers and fruits such as pear, peach, pineapple and passion fruit. The same sensations appear again on the palate, amplified by a full and harmonic taste deriving from its great structure. The Arneis full body and its persistence make this wine a unique one. The aftertaste is rich and mineral, thanks to the presence of magnesium, which is to be found abundantly in the Cornarea hill soil. It then blends with the body fruity taste, thus providing Roero Arneis Cornarea a well-balanced elegance.

Arneis grapes find in the Roero area its best spot, since it is a native vineyard of these difficult hills. This variety had almost disappeared but was recovered and cultivated again on the Cornarea hill, and it could be said that it pays back with grapes of extremely high quality.
It is an extremely versatile wine: a perfect aperitif, it perfectly matches cold and warm entrées, tasty first dishes such as risotto with asparaguses saffron or parmesan cheese, pasta with pesto or with mushrooms. It also suits cheeses, especially the medium seasoned ones, such as Robiola di Roccaverano. It is also excellent with white meats and fish: sea truffles and oysters, risotto with crayfish, while sushi and sashimi enhance its harmonic, elegant and refined taste.

La Cornarea is a family business founded by Rapetti Francesca and her husband Bovone Giampiero. The owners now are Gian Nicola Bovone, oenologist and the brother Pierfranco Bovone who deals with sales and public relations. The company’s history is closely related to that of Roero Arneis, a rare white wine, whose grapes have been cultivated and vinificated since the 1400, exclusively in the Roero Area.
At the beginning of the 70s, the Arneis grapes had almost completely disappeared. Just a few plants survived within the Nebbiolo and Barbera rows.
This is due to the fact that the Arneis, a white wine with unique characteristics like a harmonic and full body and low acidity, requires a specific vinification technology, including the fermentation temperature check through fridges that before the 70s did not exist. In the Piedmontese dialect, the name Arneis means “lively child” and this really demonstrates how difficult it was for farmers to tame the rebel character of this wine.

In the Roero area, the Cornarea vineyards have a rare and precious characteristic: they extend in an only compact body that includes the hill with the same name, on the top of which Villa Cornarea is to be found. For this reason our wine producing company has taken up the name of the historical Cornarea Hill, so called since the year 1000. The vineyards were planted by the Bovone family between 1975 and 1978.

Roero Arneis d.o.c.g is made from Arneis grapes, a white, indigenous grape variety, that has existed in the area since 15th century. The Cornarea winery was the first one to invest in the effort of saving this species of vine that, at the beginning of the 70s, had almost disappeared. Its disappearance was due to the difficulty of producing Arneis wine without adequate technologies, in fact in Piedmontese the word Arneis means naughty boy. Nowadays Roero Arneis represents the strength and the deliverance of the wine-producing Roero area.