Piedmont Itinerary

Travel, Wine Tourism, and Restaurants Forum
21

How long is a good time? Some might say forever!

As long as you have equally unthusiastic tasting companions, then 5 days could get you really great coverage, focusing on 2-3 of the Barolo villages, or Treiso, Neive and Barbaresco. However personally I would break it up to maybe include market day in Asti or Alba. The former large and wide ranging, the latter somewhat smaller, but seems slighly better overall standard.

It would be feasible to stretch to 4 producers in a day, though we prefer 2 or 3, so we can fit a good walk in, or pop back to base for an afternoon nap. Google maps often have decent coverage of producers, which can help map out some places near to each other.

There is much more to Piemonte, however this is a wine forum, so it is somewhat natural we focus on its most prestigious wine regions.

Torino is a great city, Alba quite compact and appealing. Asti has a more substantial feel, and I have heard good reports if Acqui Terme and Alessandria. Bra can easily disappoint, as despite being the spiritual home of Slow Food, never really built on that opportunity. The university of taste is away from Bra, in Pollenza iirc.

Cuneo and Gattinara appeal to us, but these are probably impractical for a short break. Much more to this fine region, even before thinking of Valle d’Aosta or the lakes.

My suggestion would be either a 4-5 day stay taking in Alba, but mainly winetasting; or a few days in Torino coupled with some winetasting to follow. Fly in and out of Torino Caselle, but Milano Malpensa isn’t a bad alternative.

FWIW we are planning an October trip to do some walking and tasting (the latter a little lower key, perhaps only a half dozen visits, or even less), most likely as a week in Castiglione Falletto or Serralunga d’Alba, plus a few days heavy duty shopping in Torino, mostly focused on food, but solely.

Regards
Ian

22

Jeff
Great to see a relaxed 2 hours planned. I typically aim for 90 mins plus travel time, though I usually try to keep that to 5-10 mins. Occasionally we have had to make excuses to leave to make tge next appointment, or have slipped a little behind, so although 90 mins usually works fine, I would actually recommend what you do. At worst, you might have time fir a 30-45 min stroll in the vineyards, so no hardship!

Regards
Ian

23

Thanks Ian. We will be in Barolo for 3 weeks, so we are taking it slow and easy. Any thoughts on the various market days? I know that the market in Alba on Saturdays is a big event, and I have heard Asti has a nice market, any others? I am also on the lookout for recommendations for spots to buy salumi and formaggi.

24

Hi Jeff
I’m away from the 'puter at the moment, working in Dublin, so haven’t got my crib notes easily to hand. I’ve got Asti down as wed and sat for the market, with an antique market on 4th sunday of the month in the centro storico. Alba has: Alba
Markets

Tuesday P.zza Sen. Osvaldo Cagnasso
Wednesday Borgo Moretta
Thursday P.zza Sen. Osvaldo Cagnasso
Friday C.so Europa
Saturday - City Center

Monforte had a tiny, maybe 4 stalls, farmers market at the weekend, but the cheese producer is worth trying for the most pungent cheese ‘spread’ I have ever tasted. Iirc it was made solely from the whey, and is bitingly acidic, so a little goes a long way.

Here’s a walk that I picked off one of the sites to do one time.
Barolo walk (from La Morra)
Our tour starts from the HYPERLINK “Città, Paesi & Borghi delle Langhe” \t “_self” La Morra Communal Cellar. Once passed the church of St.Martin, we walk on the lane that leads to the Bastioni, the ancient medieval walls. We arrive to the limit of town, and take the road to Cerequio-Fontanazza. We leave La Morra on this road: in front of us is the land of Barolo in its full splendour.

At the crossroad Fontanazza-Cerequio, we turn right. The road marks the limit of the La Serra and Brunate vineyards. Then it descends the side of the hill through the orchards and arrives in Cerequio. Here there is a monument to the young who died for freedom during the last World War.

Once we have passed through the village, the little road passes near Fontanazza, then it climbs again to a chapel made of bricks. We walk down the street to Fontanazza for a little while, then abandon it at Pelorosso and turn left, heading to the bottom of the little valley and looking to the La Morra hill in front of you. You’ll see the Torriglione village and the Rocche dell’Annunziata vineyards: the road you’re on goes right there, then, after having passed the little Gallinotto river climbs again to the Rocchette; from there, still walking, you’ll arrive to the Annunziata.

While walking, remember to enjoy the Giachini and Bricco Rocca vineyards. Take the county road and pass near the Annunziata church, with its romanic bell tower and baroque facade, where it’s still possible to see beautiful frescos; in the nearby cellars of the former monastery of Mercenasco there is now the museo Ratti of the wines of Alba. A bit down on the hill there are the Conca dell’Annunziata and Bricco Luciani vineyards.

Once you’ve passed through the few houses and left the main road, you can walk on a smaller road to Monfalletto, in the Gattera cru, and see its majestic Lebanese cedar tree: there is also a wonderful view on the Arborine, Bricco San Biagio and Serra dei Turchi vineyards on the right. You can also see, behind the big tree, the Manescotto and Manzoni vineyards. Now the road becomes even smaller and descends until it joins a road that goes around the San Biagio village, towards Santa Maria. This side of the hill is not so high and very calm, with the little Porretto river running.

Passing the San Biagio and Serra dei Turchi, on your right, you can walk up the hill to the Borgata Tetti di Santa Maria village. The Santa Maria promontory is linked to the La Morra hill by the cru of Capalot, Roggeri and Rocchettevino, then slightly descends through the Galina, Bricco Chiesa, Sarmassa and Rive o Bettolotti, Roere and Ciocchini vineyards, facing south-east (the road goes east to west).

Take the main road again, walk it to the square in front of the Madonna di Plaustra little church; from here you can walk on the road to borgata Silio and admire its vineyards. Near to the village, the road turns left and climbs the hill towards La Morra: on your left you can see all the Santa Maria vineyards. In the middle of the Roncaglie vineyards, the road turns right and climbs the steep side of the hill, to the Madonna di Loreto country chapel. You can now walk to La Morra, and enter the town walking near its sports center.

For other food, i had this place lisred but never tried it Macelleria Co-op Carni Valle Belbo, via Alba-Monforte 10 (top sausages)
Monforte has a decent alimentari/mini market. Alba is much better, with plenty of good food shops on vittorio emanuele.
The best cheese shop i have found so far is on via lagrange in Torino… Baita del formagg, and indeed with 3weeks to play with, a trip to Torino for some food shopping could be a highlight. That street has some great shops but there are great little shops dotted around the city/suburbs.

Regards
Ian

25

Just got back from Piemonte. I only had 1 day free (the rest was business) and had an appointment with Cavallotto and Renato Corino. Both were great. I highly recommend the 2 hours mentioned above. At Cavallotto they took the time to show us the cellars & vineyards, and we tasted 7 wines including 4 vintages of Barolo Riserva. At Corino we sat on the porch and tasted 4 wines including both the Barolo Arborino and Rocche.

Tasting in Piemonte is so different than Napa - all in a good way. The winemakers are directly involved and excited to talk about the wines. There is no “commercial” to any of it. At Cavallotto, not only did we taste all the great wines he even gave us a gift of 2 bottles - no charge. The people are just as great as the wines!

26

Cavallotto was awesome. Unfortunately, we only budget 1 - 1.5 hours before a G Conterno visit (they called at the last minute to squeeze us in). I had to cut them short and felt like an ass for doing it. Having said that, I am a Cavallotto and G Conterno devotee for life. Both were excellent hosts.

Having now been, I would say 2 visits a day with a leisurely lunch is the ideal. I wouldn’t do more than 3. You never know how long or short a visit will be.

Others visited…

G Rinaldi, Cogno, Altare, Vajra, Produttori, and G Cortese.

27

John:

Thanks for this update. Did you call G Conterno and G Rinaldi to set up appointments?

28

IIRC, I faxed Rinaldi and e-mailed Conterno. Rinaldi took over a month to respond. Conterno initially said no, but Roberto’s schedule changed and they called me a couple of days before (if not a day before). Two awesome visits for me and the places couldn’t be more different in appearance. Both, great and warm people.

GPS did not like Altare at all. Although not 100% classic, they were wonderful hosts and we got to meet all the generations of the family as they were bottling and boxing around our visit. The daughter who was the main host was fantastic as was her dad Mr. Altare.

It would be hard not to fall in love with Piedmont.

29

Thanks for the feedback everyone! We ended up spending a few nights in Monforte, a few in Alba, and a few in Turin. All three are great places. Although Alba is close to Monforte, I appreciated not having to drive as far to the wineries. It also freed us up to do some other daytrips from Alba without having to go south. Overall awesome time!

We visited Vajra, Elio Grasso, Giacomo Conterno, and Guiseppe Rinaldi. 2010’s are awesome. Although they’re tannic, it’s amazing how fine they are right now. Barrel samples were all really delicious without those bitter tannins hitting you in the face. At Conterno, the feeling was that there were a ton of tannin, but they were just in the background right now. Completely agreed with that feeling when we tasted through. Rinaldi is interesting - the daughters are taking over completely now and Guiseppe is spending most of his time playing around with Vespa’s. All visits were great and would recommend all of them!

30

Hi Eugene
How did you get on with Torino?

Perhaps a loaded question, as it is my favourite city in Italy. It has now awoken to tourism in a relatively modest way - I recall on my 1st visit in 1995, that a local was amazed that someone would choose to holiday in his city “Like me going to Coventry (he could have substituted Detroit) for my holiday”. I graze the specialist foodshops like a crazed hunter-gatherer; there are some wonderful wine shops; it’s very easy to navigate and the restaurants are very good. Plenty of culture and to top it all, there are some amazing chocolatiers all pushing the boundaries (Odilla is my favourite, in the Crocetta district).

regards
Ian

31

Eugene, question if i may… u stayed a few nights in Monforte and Alba, and you only got to 4 wineries?
was this by choice or were there others that you visited?

For all of them, was it just email/call to setup appointment? walkin? or contacts who helped?

THanks!

32

Torino is fantastic. It’s actually one of my favorite cities and I could have stayed there a few more days. It’s a good balance of interesting culture (egyptian museum, royal palace, old roman centers) and awesome food (eataly, chocolate, aperitivos, great restaurants). While it lacked the nice slow pace of food as we had in Piemonte, it was great and preferable to our experiences in Florence.

Mark it was sort of a choice. The visits here take a lot longer than the US as we were meeting with all the winemakers. Each visit took a good two hours or so (partially due to the volume of questions I had). Between 2 visits and a good long lunch, my day was full (10-12pm visit, 12:30-3pm lunch, 3-5pm visit, back for a break, then 8 or 9pm dinner). Between a good 6 or 7 days, we spent 2 full days doing nothing but wine. In between, there were some enoteca’s you could walk in to do tastings (such as in barbaresco), which we did. That, combined with wines at all our meals and buying wine at shops was kind of enough even for a wine berserker. It was nice to take a break and go visit some old cities and markets without thinking about wine. If I had spent maybe a full 2 weeks there I’d add more wineries, but for 7 days, that was enough for my wife and me.

For Vajra, Grasso, and Conterno, an email was sufficient. My B&B in Alba set up the meeting with Rinaldi. The former three seemed really organized. Rinaldi is basically run by the two daughters so they don’t seem like they have a very sophisticated system for keeping track of visits.

33

Thanks to all who contributed on this thread. I am starting the plans to take the family to the Piedmont for a long week in August. It will be adults (mostly non-berserker types) and our 4 and 7 year olds plus my sister in laws 4 and 7 year olds. I think we will rent a villa somewhere that accommodate a large family and do some day trips. The information above gives me some great ideas for wine visits - I’m thinking 3 or 4 visits will be it plus enotecas and restaurants.

Any ideas on kid friendly ideas and buying and hauling wine would be quite useful. Thanks in advance.

James

34

This is fantastic info, folks. Soaking it all in. I will be traveling with my wife and son; she is a wine lover but not a berskerker by any measure, and he is indifferent. I would love to visit Tourin – I have never been – and would like to work in maybe a night in the barolo zone. If you love traditional baroli, which one or two or three producers would top your list? Do these producers sell from the cellar door? I’d really like to carry a bottle (or six) back home.

Thanks again (esp. Ian!)

35

James
everything in Italy is kid friendly, you can bring your kids to fine dining and the other tables could not care less. We start our kids early on this kind of things… If you buy wine you can have it shipped to your house by the local Mail Boxes etc branch

36

Hi Neal
For visiting producers, almost all require an appointment, and even if they have a cellar door (e.g. Produttori del Barbaresco) the reception you’ll get having made an appointment will be a world apart from just popping in. I email in Italian, but I’d say the majority speak English better than I speak Italian, so English should be fine for most. Generally 9/10 I get a response, though occasionally the email hits a holiday or falls through the cracks.

Most don’t charge for the tasting, and any offer to pay for it is waved off as ‘nonsense’. Of course purchasing a bottle or more is appreciated, though I’ve never ever been pressured to buy in Piemonte (oddly that’s happened just the once, in Tuscany at a tasting we paid for!!!).

I’d strongly recommend the walking, which can be very pleasant, directly through the vineyards. Thus you give the family a nice walk (perhaps with a picnic mid-walk) whilst mentally ticking off the vineyards (Cerequio, Brunate, …) as you go. When we got back after one trip, I got some wine glasses engraved with the vineyards we walked through, which did help remind us of the wonderful walks. There is a great walking map sold locally for ~ €6. Also the Enogea cru maps are on sale locally for the real wine geek.

For producers, my recommendation would be to find one you really want to visit, but then look on www.langheroero.it / google maps to find the other couple of producers you can walk to. We’ve found some good producers with such ‘semi-blind’ selection and it’s great to see producers who may never get their wines exported to your area.

Castiglione Falletto might be a nice choice, as the castle is nicely impressive, and Vietti/Cavallotto might appeal as wineries. Another charming small place is Verduno, which has a small number of high quality producers - ideal for a brief visit (and being the most northern, easy to get to from the Bra/Alba main road.

For accommodation, www.langheroero.it are excellent, the best tourist office I’ve encountered in Italy, but one that might appeal if you hire a car is Agriturismo val di Spinso in Santa Vittoria d’Alba. Large apartments (2 bedrooms plus large open plan kitchen/diner/lounge and patio leading onto a garden, bbq area and pool). Not an obvious location (unless you’re a fan of the Anthony Quinn film or Cinzano whose factory is over the hill) but very near to Verduno and the apartments are very well equipped. There are however many great places and very few poor ones.

Torino, as mentioned above is a favourite city (and I’m not generally a fan of cities). Food, wine, chocolate and the wonderfully undersold Museo Pietro Micca. Driving not really recommended, but that can juts make it a great place to land & get bearings before heading off elsewhere.

James
Worth flexing the holiday dates if necessary to avoid ferragosto & the still popular national holiday period. I don’t know the precise dates, but much accommodation can be booked out / expensive in the peak fortnight. Someone like Riccardo who lives in Italy will be able to give you more precise info. I’ve generally avoided August as it’s too hot for me, but if you find somewhere nice in the countryside with a pool (and aircon) then you should be just fine. The place I suggested above for Neal would be worth a look, as the 3-4 apartments are next door to each other & would make for a very convivial setting.

Apartments can be a good cure for the tendency to eat big meals in Italy (though eating just a course or two is perfectly acceptable these days). Enoteche also serve a similar purpose with often excellent lighter/smaller dishes.

Finally, if you get the chance to find a place with a good evening passeggiata (often untouristy small-mid sized towns) it can be a great family experience where the vibrancy of the mood can be very uplifting, and chances are your children will make instant friends. La Spezia has been a favourite such evening haunt for us, a town of otherwise moderate interest known to most tourists as the nearest mainline station to the east of Cinque Terre.

Acqui Terme well worth a look for a day trip, as it’s mostly pedestrianized in the centre, has a good market on the two days it runs, and the thermal spring water might appeal to the kids.

Have fun guys - a great region, still mostly unspoilt by tourism.

regards
Ian

37

This is fantastic information Ian. Thank you for taking the time to educate me.

38

Just a few things to add… I have to travel to Milan for work and have a made a few trips down to the region

For places to stay, I have stayed at the Albergo dell’Agenzia (http://www.albergoagenzia.com/) on the road to Bra and the Il Boscareto ( http://www.ilboscaretoresort.it/) near Serralunga. While I don’t think either was fantastic, I preferred the old charm of the Albergo, even though Boscareto is better located. I have also heard great things about the Locanda del Pilone but they were full when I tried to stay.

For winery visits, all were done by appointment. As Ian mentioned, the cellar staff (often the winemakers themselves) are incredibly friendly and generous - the polar opposite of much of Napa Valley. Tastings were free with no pressure to buy - some didn’t even have wine to sell as they had sold out the current vintages. I can’t really recommend one over another - everyone was incredibly generous - but I have tried: Bartolo Mascarello, Brovia, Elio Altare, Renato Corino, Cavallotto & Dosio. If you haven’t been before, one thing to note is that the cellar door prices are GREAT in comparison to US prices (I think current releases (2010) at Giuseppe Rinaldi is €42, while Bartolo Mascarello was €47. The only caveat is that most of the 2010’s are sold out by now

While all the food is fantastic, the two most memorable higher-end experiences were Ristorante Bovio near La Morra and Piazza Duomo in Alba. Bovio is very traditional but in a good way. We had the fixed-price truffle menu there in early December and it was fantastic! Piazza Duomo is much more “modern” but equally great. As a bonus, while neither one has a lot of older vintages, the wine list prices are really quite good. I couldn’t resist the 2010 Giuseppe Rinaldi’s for €80 and €90 respectively.

39

I will second Piazza Duomo in Alba as an incredible dining experience. The wine list is in two volumes, so you should be able to find something that you’ll like.

We hired a car and driver and it was definitely worth it. No getting lost and being late for the appointment, etc. Our driver had a small vineyard of his own, so he was very interested in what the other wineries were doing, which was fun.

40

Though we stayed at and loved Il Boscareto and would highly recommend it (including sitting outside at their restaurant which we thought was easily the quality of a * and on its way to **), I otherwise second Brian’s comments. Really enjoyed our visit to Rinaldi though they didn’t have any Barolo to sell at the time. Bovio is a must visit both for the view and wine list - food was good but didn’t stand out. Piazza Duomo is a tour de force - we could only get in for a late lunch and had wonderful time. Given the size of the wine list, it is probably worth looking before getting there.

Visited Voerzio and had a great visit - learned a lot and they also opened some older vintages for the tasting portion.