2022 Cascina Val del Prete, Roero Arneis "Luèt"

Italian white wines can have a hard time competing on our tasting table against top tier French, German, and Austrian wines–but not Val del Prete’s Roero Arneis! This shouldn’t come as any surprise, given some of the elite Piedmontese producers who’ve championed the Arneis variety—Vietti, Bruno Giacosa, Ceretto—but if you’re still skipping past the likes of “Luèt” en route to yet another bottle of Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, you’re really missing out. This specialty of the Roero DOCG, just north of Barolo, already has more name recognition than most indigenous Italian whites, but taste this 2019 and Arneis will be imprinted in your taste memory permanently. Organically farmed and thrumming with energy, it will remind you of an assortment of more-familiar varieties while also expanding your white wine vocabulary. None of us could identify it in a blind tasting, other than to dub it an excellent and genuinely serious white wine, whatever it was. That's the only judgment that really ma