On To the Piemonte

After nearly a week in Torino, Carol and Roger were ready to get out into the campagna (countryside) and explore this part of Italy.



Piemonte means literally foot (Piede) of the mountains (Monte).

This intimidated our bikes, so they hopped on a train and headed 81 km to the small town of Incise Scapaccino, where we would spend our first week in Italy's premier wine country.

Maddalena Porta, the owner of Casa Dalila, and Carol immediately became fast friends.  The apartment was modern, spacious and well appointed.

But more importantly, Maddelena provided us with unfailingly good advice on places to go and things to see.

Our stay would have been much less enjoyable were it not for her guidance.

We had arrived in the Piemonte just in time.

The grapes were ripening on the vine.

The harvest had already begun.

The signs along the road told the story.  "Street of Wine.  The trail of good aromas."

In the picture at the right, Roger is making sure the sign was telling the truth.

It was.

There were only two problems:

1)  Which winery to choose.

2)  Drinking wine followed by riding your bike is a really bad idea.












The next day, it was into the lion's den...the town of Canelli...the epicenter of Spumonte and Moscato wine production.




This was only one of several wine cellars so big they are called the "cathedrals of wine."

This particular cellar, run by the Bosca family since 1831, had three million...that's right, three million... bottles of wine.


And the cellar had space set aside for another two million bottles for this year's vintage.



Bottles are stored horizontally for two years and then at a 45 degree angle, neck down, for several months.  Because these types of wine are bubbly, the bottles have to be rotated regularly to make sure the fermentation process consumes all the residue in the bottle, and that they don't explode.

Wine is so plentiful in this part of the world, we were able to pick up this bottle of very serviceable Barbera...and a DOC at that...for less than 2 Euros.

There are other things than wine to see in this part of the Piemonte.  The following day we visited the ancient Roman spa town of Acqui Terme.



The Roman baths are now underground.



In the late 19th century, the mayor of Acquit Terme hired an architect to redesign the town.  In the heart of the old city stands this pergola...to mark the spot where for hundreds of years...

...more than 600 liters of water per minute, heated to 170 degrees, has come out of the ground.

Just roaming the quiet streets (it was a Sunday) of the old city was a pleasure.

No reason to show this photo other than it seemed a remarkable carving on somebody's door...and the symbol on many of the houses in tis neighborhood.









Incise Scapaccino, where we stayed, was built largely after World War II.  Lots of nondescript concrete apartment high-rises.  But just a 10 minute walk away...

...is a 15th century village, called Borgo Villa.





In the year 1415, the walls of this castle were reduced to rubble...as competing armies fought over access to this high ground.

It's a pretty little village...built of brick, where similar vintage Tuscan towns were built of stone.

Just four km up the road from Incisa Scapaccino lies the town of Nizza Monforrato.


Nizza has an interesting story to tell.  Because the town lies in a valley, and grapes grow best on hillsides, there was very little wine produced here.


But Nizza is surrounded by towns that do produce wine, so very early on it became a center for making wine casks.


When a barrel-maker had his casks ready, he would send an apprentice running to nearby wineries to try and make a sale.  The wineries would want to see a sample before they bought, so the apprentice would run back, grab a partner and hurry to roll the cask to the winery before a competitor got there.


Over the centuries, this tradition evolved into a formal competition, Pizza's annual palio.  The event sounds like a lot of fun.  Too bad we weren't in town at the right time of year.