In 2022 I had the pleasure of taking a call from 2nd generation grower Luisa Ponzi, of Ponzi Vineyards, who offered me the opportunity to work with her old vine, own-rooted planting of Arneis. This variety given to the Ponzi family by the Vietti family (along with Dolcetto) in the early 1980’s after the families had visited with each other in their homes of Barolo and the Chehalem Mountains.
This is a variety that neither myself nor Chad had worked with before and the opportunity to work with organic old vines was one we could not pass up. True to our philosophy of letting the grape tell us what it wants to be in a given vintage to express the truest sense of itself and the Willamette Valley we observed and tasted the variety throughout the ripening phase. What we learned was that it is a late ripening variety, if you let it be, and while 2022 gave the valley its’ warmest ever October (high’s of 86 degrees of days) it was in this late sunny fall that the true variety emerged. We harvested this fruit in late October at a ripe and powerful 24 brix which gives us an expressive tropical fruit and marzipan driven style of Arneis. We fermented the wine in Chestnut barrels and neutral french oak and this helps to accentuate the varieties sweet nuttiness. We have never seen a style of Arneis quite like this from Vietti but believe the soil in this part of the Chehalem Mountains AVA, technically the Laurelwood District loess soils, is more similar in profile to the sandy soils of Roero in Piedmont than those of Barolo, and as such the style is more aligned to the ripe and rich full-bodied wines of the sandy Roero slopes.
