Wine in Piemonte

For the third time Piet joined his friends of the infamous wine tasting society “Het Derde Glas” on their annual trip, with Piemonte in northwestern Italy as destination. Logistically this was a bit more complicated than northern France due to the distance, so the group was split in two: Paul (with his rather large company car) and Frits drove down, while Jochem, Sybren and Piet flew to Milan and picked up a rental car. They got to the scenic town of Neive to set up base camp for the next 2 days in an Agriturismo, and then settled down outside, at a restaurant for dinner. The weather was perfect, and the first Piemontese wines were tasted. The support vehicle arrived in time for starters, and we got the first lessons about Nebbiolo and Barbera (which are grapes) and Barolo and Barbaresco (that are high quality wines, made of Nebbiolo grapes).

The next morning we started our sampling program at the Tenuto Langasco winery. The owner just spoke Italian, and we managed to visit his cellars and taste a few of his wines before we discovered a common language: French. From that moment the conversation improved a lot! Next stop was Marchiese Alfieri, where we were received by an English speaking hostess in a beautiful hilltop castle. A professional tasting was set up, and followed by a tour around the impressive property. As we were running way behind schedule we needed a quick lunch, and were guided to Portocamero, where the ancestors of the new Argentinean pope originate from. His portrait was prominent in the square, where we sat down for an interesting lunch of microwave heated, tinned ravioli. At least it provided a solid lining for the afternoon....

Cantina Sant’ Agatha was just a few kilometres down the road, and luckily the lady of the house was Austrian, so we could discuss oak barrels in quite some detail in both English and German. The last winery of the day was Villa Giada, where the owner impressed us with his English, until his mobile rang. He answered “pronto mamma”, and then we knew who was pulling the strings. Mamma spoke even better English, after a year in the States (probably in the 50-ies). They opened all their wines, and we left with the largest purchase of the trip, including wine made of "Gamba di Pernice (foot of the partridge)” grapes. Keeping our sanity throughout the day was managed by spitting out most of the wine, many “sputacchiere” were filled! Back in Neive it was straight on to dinner, in Luna nel Pozzo, the only other restaurant in town. The atmosphere was out-of-season dead, the waiter looked like a retired mobster, but the food (and company!) was very good.

The village of Neive, seen from the Agriturismo

View from Tenuto Langasco winery 

Neive at sunset

In the morning it was full on again, with a quick stop at Barbaresco village, where the main winery  Gaja does not receive visitors, as they are just too well off. Despite our in-depth navigation preparations (Google Earth, Google Streetview, a TomTom, a GPS and regular maps) we were defeated by the Italian address system. Ca del Baio was in the correct village, but somewhere completely different. The next winery, Guido Porro, was even in an entirely different town. And the Italians had some issues with our pronunciation of “Porro”, which made asking for directions interesting (“aahh Porrrro”). Guido was pulled out of the field by his wife, and they turned out to be another Italian-only hand-and-feet communication job, but we managed to taste and buy. Lunch was in Guido’s town Serralungo, on an outside terrace overlooking the hills, where every available square meters was planted with grapevines. After lunch we visited Ruggeri Corsini; here the owner had to drag his ill wife out of bed, as he was too busy planting young vines. Despite her illness the lady had a lot of energy, and we probably would have spend a whole day being lectured if she had been at full health. The last address turned out to be quite efficient, and also had very good and expensive Barolo’s on offer. By that time the car’s suspension (and our budgets?) were under strain, and we checked in to an Agriturismo, in La Morra. This was a brand new building, obviously renovated with great effort, but little common sense. They had lots of dust-gathering knick-knacks in the rooms and a small elevator as only access to the first floor. We went for dinner in Bovio, an upmarket restaurant with many well dressed foreigners ordering large bottles of expensive wine, so we fitted right in! The food was excellent, and after a refreshing walk back it was time for bed. Four of us entered the lift, that made some movement and noise, and when the doors opened a minute later we were still on the ground floor. After this the lift did not move anymore, and probably the fact that the owner indicated a three persons maximum had something to do with this. In the end we had to enter the first floor through two of the guest rooms, and the emergency exit. The next morning the lift load was reduced to two people only!

The centre of Barbaresco village

Ready for another wine tasting, at Ca del Baio

View from Guido Porro's house

La Morra village, in the centre of the Barolo area

The weather had completely turned around; it was cold with a slight drizzle, after 2 days of sunshine and shorts. The cars parted ways; Paul and Frits drove back to The Netherlands with all the treasure and Piet, Jochem and Sybren went to Milan, whilst the drizzle turned into pouring rain, which didn’t stop for the rest of the day. For some reason Milan has two airports, Malpensa (Sybren’s departure) and Linate (Jochem and Piet). Milan’s town centre is right in the middle of the two, so the opportunity was used to  visit the Piazza del Duomo, with the famous white cathedral. The real end of the trip will only be in a few weeks time, when the bottles have been divided, and a first Barolo tasting has taken place. And most expedition members are running out of Champagne, so there might be another trip on the horizon this year....

Milan, the Piazza del Duomo in the pouring rain