Arneis

Autumn is here and for most of us, that means shifting from the lighter summer rosés, whites and BBQ Reds into something that matches with heartier food or sitting by the fire on a chilly fall evening. At every party though there is someone who says they only drink white wine. Sometimes he or she means sweet, but often dry wines work too. Just like red wines, however, there are white wines that work great for the autumn season too.

When one thinks of dry wines from Italy’s Piemonte, they are usually red wines. There is a white wine though that should be on everyone’s radar. I am speaking about Arneis. It is the perfect white for transitioning from summer to autumn. Arneis is both the name of a wine and the grape from which it is made. The name means “little rascal” in Piemontese dialect, so named because it can be difficult to grow. Historically that difficulty was because the better situated vineyards were planted with the “more important” red nebbiolo grape leaving the “lesser” sites for Arneis.