EUROPE | A POST-OLYMPIC RAMBLE
Seeing Italy at a snail's pace
Revel in the red wine and red brick, cuisine, castles and pastries to sigh for.
GIUSEPPE AZZOLINA, a 44-year-old stonemason, leaned across the icy scaffolding atop the second-highest medieval tower on Piazza Risorgimento in the center of Alba and said, "First we restore the tower, then we redo the apartment building below where no one has lived since World War II.
"It's like making good wine: It takes time."
Time has long been measured unhurriedly in Alba and the wine country that surrounds it in northern Italy's Piedmont region. While life moves at a dizzying pace in Turin, just 40 miles north and the site of this month's Winter Olympics, the hour hand seems to slow here. Centuries-old buildings take years to restore, and powerful, inky wines come into their own only after a decade. Towns and villages are timeworn and full of character.
They are, perhaps, the antithesis of and the antidote for the 21st century.
The Romans founded Alba Pompeia in 100 BC. Neolithic finds under the town's layer cake of curving, cobbled streets confirm even earlier origins. But it's the Middle Ages you feel in Alba and nearby villages. Romanesque churches, fortified farms, turreted castles and towers built of dark red brick seem to rise everywhere you look. Baroque balconies, ironwork and colorful facades added from the 1600s to the 1800s soften the architectural landscape.
As charming as this is, you don't visit Alba and the surrounding wine country strictly for the museums or the monuments. Alba, population 30,000, is the economic hub of the Roero and Langhe winegrowing districts, which lie north and south of the Tanaro River, and they are known for big red Barolo and Barbaresco wines.
The wine and food, this enogastronomia, are why my wife, Alison Harris, and I returned eagerly in November for a four-day visit after an absence of more than a decade.
The Mediterranean is less than 100 miles south of Alba. But the Piedmont region's traditional cooking is as luscious, meaty and creamy as that of the abutting Savoy. Piedmont and France's Savoy also share cultural, linguistic and political ties. When the Franco-Italian dynasty of Savoy kings moved in the 1500s from Chambéry to Turin, the Roero and Langhe became their game park, wine cellar and pantry. Pungent, gnarled white Alba truffles come from here, plus dozens of creamy or hard cheeses, premium dry-aged beef, plump porcini mushrooms, hazelnuts and milk chocolate.
Irresistible bakeries, specialty food boutiques, wineries, cafes and restaurants stand shoulder to shoulder. There are remarkably few fast-food joints.
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Eat, drink, then walk
TO explore the area, do as we did and pick up a car in Turin, drive south through vineyards to go wine tasting and eating, then spend three or four days walking around the atmospheric towns and villages to work off your meals.
We chose as our base Villa Tiboldi, an appealing winery, restaurant and bed-and-breakfast in the vineyards near Canale, a farm town with historic porticos and fabulous food and wine about 10 miles north of Alba.
We chose Villa Tiboldi partly because its chef, Stefano Paganini, 24, is winning a reputation for refined revisited regional classics. We ate Paganini's food several times — poached eggs with Jerusalem artichokes and creamed chestnuts, beef tongue salad with slivered artichokes and piquant parsley sauce — and couldn't get enough of it.
As we had on earlier visits to the region, we let our instincts and whims guide us, crisscrossing and backtracking on scenic roads with no particular plan. Premodern signage points you along wine routes where dozens of wineries and tasting rooms welcome visitors.
 Should we take offense, order a drink, or what? That depends, of course, on where you think these words turned up. |
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