Aside from a day trip to Turin several years ago, Piedmont has not featured on my itineraries in the past. This time around, I made plans to see a few of the highlights of the region. The first destination was the World Heritage property of the Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont.
The serial site covers five distinct areas that encompass the full range of Piedmontese wine-growing and wine-making characteristics. Proper exploration of all components of such a property would be measured in multiple days, and I could only give it a single one. The Langhe of Barolo is the farthest away from Milan, and I always in the past preferred the “queen wine” of Barbaresco Nebbiolo to its more exalted Barolo cousin, so my primary target for the day was Barbaresco.
Here are a few vineyard views in the area.
This is late November, and you can clearly see snow at higher elevations. Curiously enough – or possibly logically enough, for those more familiar with the rules of nature – there was evidently more snow in the northward perspectives (in other words, on the southside slopes), than when looking in the opposite direction; something that I kept noticing throughout the day.
The village in the above perspective is Neive, where we will go soon afterwards.
And here is Barbaresco, which gives its name to the appellation.
The village proper is only mildly interesting, so my entire photography of it consists of approach views shown above and a few different-angle pictures of the main street running up to the Church of San Giovanni Battista and the dominating tower.
Immediately behind me in that last shot is the entrance to Enoteca Regionale del Barbaresco, where I partook in a tasting of local wines. You cannot hurry that process if you want proper enjoyment. That contributed to the minimal walking around the village.
The aforementioned Neive was my next stop, a very pretty village that is a member of the association of “the most beautiful villages in Italy”. It is headlined by two churches standing on the same square, the Catholic Parrocchia dei SS. Pietro e Paolo and the Macedonian Orthodox church of Archangel Michael.
The relative exuberance of the interior of what is no more than a humble parish church is always pretty amazing to observe…
… while the Orthodox temple clearly adapted to the design concepts of what I suspect was the Baroque Catholic church in the past, resulting in an unusual curvature of the altar screen.
While in Neive, I mostly just strolled around.
There were opportunities for further wine stops throughout the village, but I had to avoid overindulging.
Two more perspectives from an elevated point in Neive. Again, curiously, the southward view is significantly less snowy than the northward one.
My next destination was in the heart of the area known as Monferrato of Infernot. The best batch of pictures for the day came out of the impromptu stop in the middle of the vineyards on the approach to Cella Monte.
The village in the background of the above shots is actually not Cella Monte, but Rosignano Monferrato. Cella Monte is in the next shot.
I came here specifically because I wanted to tour the infernots. They are the subterranean chambers carved from sandstone, used for aging bottled wines. Developed in the 19th century in the Monferrato region, these underground chambers are both a unique architectural tradition and an essential part of the process of wine maturation in the area.
Cella Monte is a hotspot for infernots, with over a dozen available for touring. In fact, you can visit a few with a guide if you time your arrival for the limited opening hours of the local Ecomuseo della Pietra da Cantoni. I technically managed that timing perfectly, but my first item on the agenda was a tour and a tasting at a local winery called Cinque Quinti, which has a full-fledged visitor center directly in the village. Here is their infernot.
There are also old concrete fermentation chambers, no longer in use, as well as other areas of wine processing and storage.
Following the tour of the infernot, I was given a thorough and unhurried tasting of Cinque Quinti wines, accompanied by an excellent plate of meats and cheeses. As I easily put on an air of a connoisseur when it comes to wines, I managed to engage the hostess to the degree that she offered me two additional wines to taste, of a more complex variety than what was in the standard tasting flight. With that, I lost my opportunity to get to the Ecomuseo in time for more infernot tours. You lose some, but you also win some, I suppose.
So I lingered in the Cinque Quinti visitor center and stepped out on its back-garden terrace for additional views of Rosignano Monferrato.
When I left the winery, it was already dark. Cella Monte the village, in a sense, largely escaped my attentions. Which is a bit of an inexplicable miss, on reflection, since it is also considered to be a worthy representative of the concept of one of the most beautiful villages in Italy.
It probably goes without saying that in the warmer months, with extended daylight, I would likely get more out of touring wine-growing areas than I could in November. In any instance, driving around vineyards and pretty villages and stopping by for tastings and tours should span more than one day in order to attain the full appreciation of this beautiful region. My one limited day was still among the best days overall in my schedule, so no regrets.
In fact, I could have added more wine-related sights to the itinerary if not for visiting Alba in the morning of that same day.
Alba is a larger town that could act as an excellent base for visiting both areas of Barolo and Barbaresco (while not itself being part of the World Heritage designation). It is pleasing to the eye without being exceptional, and its “killer feature” is that it is the center of the truffle industry. I watch a non-trivial number of travel shows on various streaming services, and every self-respecting Italian-centric show would pay respects to both the traditional truffle hunting and to the meals enhanced by this delicacy. Having learned that the Alba Truffle Festival coincides with my visit to the area, I made a last-minute decision to reshuffle my schedule.
And then ended up not going to the main truffle market at all!
When I walked up to its entrance, I belatedly recognized that you needed to pay an entrance fee for the privilege. I am, in fact, neither a true truffle aficionado nor even someone who understands the finer points of the product. So paying even a nominal fee in this instance felt like a waste of time and money, especially as market stalls elsewhere in town offered plenty of their truffle-flavored products for the passersby to taste.
So I made a bit of a walkabout of Alba instead. This is Piazza Duomo, quite representative of the town’s palette (pink-ish hues) and the architectural make-up that is punctuated by towers.
Those medieval towers, hemmed in by later-era buildings, appear here or there.
The outstanding churches in the historic center include Duomo di San Lorenzo, Chiesa Parrocchiale di San Giovanni Battista, and especially Chiesa di San Domenico.
San Domenico, which appeared not to be an active place of worship, dazzled with its frescoes and the painted ceiling.
There was an exhibition inside the church called “More than Kids”. The information boards suggested that it was meant as a commentary on the shape of the world that future generations will inherit. Its main sculptural groups projected unease.
The dog in this street sand-art sculpture did not seem to be happy either.
It was still fairly early on a Saturday morning when I was in Alba. Aside from the main squares, the town has not woken up yet.
After about an hour, I drove to Barbaresco, which is featured at the top of this post.