When you reach, the first breath is sweet and inviting: tremendous smell of hazelnuts hits you and blows your mind.
Sniff sniff! You just want to jump into a Nutella jar!
Welcome to Alba, the first town on the way to Langhe! A place that is actually much more than the Ferrero town where Nutella was born.
My first stop is always sweet: chocolate and coffee to start celebrating the Italian capital of truffle. Melting of chocolate in the mouth, crunching of hazelnuts, the chocolate truffles are just recalling the look of the kings of subsoil. In fact, Alba is renown all over the world for the very expensive white truffles. Grated on pasta and eggs, just few grams: the pocket is empty and the soul rejuvenated.
The Langhe landscape is hazelnuts and wine yards all around; the white and black truffles are hidden treasures that only "furry trained professionals" are able to spot!
The horizon is a fluffy waiving line: hills and hills blurring in the fog and the pattern of plaited heads interrupted by narrow rammed earth lanes.
On top of the hills castles and countryside houses are the reminiscences of the life and power in the rural areas of North Italy. Tradition and innovation in one of the epicentre of the Italian wine production.
Families carry on family businesses since hundreds of years through many generations, producing wines of immense value and incredible taste. Between them there is a star, one of the most renown in the world: Barolo.
Enology, politics, power, nobility, an intricate background woven together in creating a fertile ground for Barolo, the red gold of Langhe, to be born. Barolo is a town and a noble family before being a wine and it is thanks to the smart Marquesses of Barolo (Carlo Tancredi and Juliette Ferretti) that it became the wine of the king of Savoia (Carlo Alberto). Not only a royal treasure, also Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour (one of the protagonists of the Italian Risorgimento), is part of the plot.
Walking between the rows of wine plant and visiting the many wineries, it is still possible to perceive the slow pace of any activity that is closely connected with nature and its cycles. Despite the evolution of winery techniques, seasons beat the time and decide the success or failure of harvests.
We inherited a fabulous wine that brings in the roots of its plants, the shrewdness of the aristocracy, the sweat and fatigue of the peasants and the evolution of a drink that is closer to gods than humans.
One of the many good reasons to give a try to Langhe.
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