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Cascina Val del Prete 2021 'Bizzarro' Arneis, Roero, Piedmont, Italy
Winemaker: Mario Roagna
Farming: Certified Organic
Varieties: Arneis
Soil / Terroir: The vineyard sits at 820 feet of elevation. East-West exposure. Sandy with an alkaline ph level. Some clay veins throughout.
Vinification: A 1 1/2-day maceration on the skins. Fermentation and malolactic occur
in French oak barrels. It rests on the yeasts, (lees), for 7 months. Aging: 3 months in
the bottle.
From our March 2021 Bottle Club Notes:
Nestled in the northeastern reaches of Italy, in Piemonte, Cascina Val del Prete is named for the 'Valley of the Priests,' a nod to its history as the home of the exiled Bishop of Asti who lived there in 1850. Since then, the farmhouse and its vineyards have been passed via inheritance from one hand to another, until Bartolomeo and Carolina Roagna purchased the estate in 1977.
Since the late 70s, the Roagna family has farmed various grains, fruits and grapes, but when son Mario and his wife Maria Carla took over in 1995, the estate turned its focus to viticulture, natural farming practices, and the production of outstanding wines. Cascina Val del Prete has been a benchmark for well-made, value-driven Roero wines for well over a decade now, but in recent years Mario has taken an adventurous lean toward smaller production bottlings.
We were super lucky to taste this skin-contact Arneis as part of a blind lineup of orange wines a couple of months back, and we were immediately taken by its freshness, acidity, texture and complexity! Usually, Arneis from Roero is a quaffable, concentrated wine, excellent with all kinds of lean meats and pasta dishes. But as an orange wine, in this case made from a day-and-a-half of extended skin contact and fermentation in french oak, the wine is unctuous and deep, giving savory and herbal notes of fenugreek, orange oil and raw honey. The acidity keeps you coming back for more, and the wine continuously evolves in the glass. Drink it out of a large glass at cellar temp (~55F) and let it strutt its stuff alongside anything from rich coconut curries to roast chicken to cream sauce pastas. Let yourself be surprised!