The Barolo Wine District: Bra, La Morra, Barolo

October 15, 2007 Monday

Oh boy. After half a bottle of Barolo with dinner last night, I had a hangover that lasted all day. That’ll teach me! (yeah, right).

Notes on Italians. There aren’t many public places to access the Internet in Italy. I think part of that is because the culture puts much more emphasis on verbal communications among people, especially family members. This is evident on the street, in restaurants, shopping, etc. They seem to crave interpersonal communications, and the computer represents the complete opposite. So they don’t use it as a communications device, e.g., the Internet. This talking can become problematic, such as when your waiter in a restaurant spends more time chatting with his/her co-workers than paying attention to you and your food. But this may explain the relatively low level of Internet adoption in Italy.

Another note is that in smaller cities and towns, Sunday and/or Mondays are days off for the shopkeepers. Most places are closed on these days. During the truffle festival, many stay open on Sundays when the crowds are here. Even some of the supermarkets close or have shortened hours on these days. And even during the week, many shops close for the afternoon (siesta in Italy?). Quite an annoyance when you’re used to having shops open 7 days a week.

Today I visited some of the towns/villages in the Barolo district: Bra, La Morra, and Barolo. This isn’t like visiting Napa. These towns are small (but so is Napa). But there isn’t the touristic following or the huge land prices that there are in Napa. Many of the wineries actually have production facilities in town. I asked about possible tours of the region—there aren’t any. Not enough concentration of tourists to justify it. But there are more sensible approaches to the issue: more tasting houses that are in business to sell the wine (regardless of producer). This way you can limit your tasting to the kind of wine (Nebbiolo, Dolcetto d’Alba, etc.) from multiple wine makers. To my mind this is a much better tasting than comparing different types of wine within the same wine makers offering.

Most of the wine makers don’t have tasting rooms that are normally open to the public anyway. The book I got indicated that nearly all of the wineries required a call to make a reservation. So the visit to the towns/villages is really more about driving in the countryside, seeing the vines in the fields, seeing the architecture of these old towns, and so on.

I got a dinner recommendation from the hotel staff for Ristorante da Stefania. Nice place, but they didn’t have anything with truffles! They made up for it by carrying a half-bottle of Gaja Barbaresco for only 19 euro. This is the fist Gaja I’ve seen with a bottle price of less and 100 euro (many are over 200 euro)! The service was good, but it was very strange that they didn’t clear the unused settings. When I sat down, the table was set for 2, and they served around the extra setting, rather than clearing. Oh well.

The food that I thought I was going to die for in Piemonte is a bit disappointing. Most restaurants’ menus are called “typical” Piemontese, which means they have some antipasti; a tagliatella with olive oil, butter, and sage; beef braised in Barolo. And a few assorted other things. But there don’t seem to be any vegetables (unless you count eggplant, which isn’t something edible in my book). Occasionally they will include a few rounds of zucchini—one place even served grilled slices of zucchini and bell peppers with a dish! But otherwise you have to order vegetables separately from a fairly restricted list (mostly sauted spinach).

Of course in Alba and many other localities, you can get truffle on just about anything. Since truffle is so expensive, there is a quantum price jump, and often the cost of the underlying dish is "lost in the noise". For example, if there are a few pasta dishes at varying prices, once you add truffle to any of them, the price is the same. Typically a dish of pasta with white truffle goes for about 25 euro ($35).

So what is about white truffles for which people will pay these outrageous prices? It’s almost undefinable. Yes, if you’ve had white truffle OIL, you have an idea of the aroma and flavor. But when you truly have the truffle, it’s much more subtle and indescribably delicious. Dishes prepared with truffle oil are as heavy metal rock to a Mozart sonata. One just blasts you out of your seat, while the other’s complexity and elegance simply takes you on a magnificent aural journey.