Hill towns near Alba and Asti

October 16, 2007, Tuesday

I decided to drive around some of the small hill towns in the region. I saw a couple while I was driving around Bra, Barolo, etc. and thought it would be nice to visit a few.

This takes another note to explain: I got the GPS thinking that it would help me find wineries and get around easier. Well, we saw how mistaken that idea was earlier. I also found that the antenna kept falling off, so it would lose the satellites and have to resync (a process taking several minutes). All in all, it’s been pretty useless. But not to fear, driving around isn’t a problem. What you have to do is find a sequence of mid-sized towns toward any small destination and just follow the signs. This isn’t hard if you have even a moderately decent map. There are good signs at intersections and roundabouts showing which direction to take toward a destination. But, of course, they only list the major cities and next size down of towns at most places (like Alba, Asti, Torino) and small villages in the nearby vicinity. So you have to get in close, but then the signs take you right there. I had no problem finding villages of only a few 10s of homes.

The trick is, when you see a hill town, how to find out the name of it. This is usually pretty easy. Just stop someone, point at it, and ask. Then you can follow the signs. In this fashion I visited: Santa Vittoria d’Alba, Canale, San Stefano Roero, San Damiano d’Alba, Asti, Isola d’Asti Villa, Neivi, Barbaresco, and Tre Stelle.

Santa Vittoria d’Alba is the village on the hilltop I’d seen while driving to Barolo yesterday. It has a castle with a big tower on it that has been remade into a hotel. And an old church with a parish house. And that’s it (well, there may be a few houses on the approaches going up the hill, but there are no shops of any kind). Sort of isolated (you have to drive down into the valley to anything). The castle/hotel does have a restaurant with the hotel that has a gorgeous view out over the grape fields. Alas, they were closed, so I couldn’t even sit there and sip an espresso.

There is a very small town near here named Cinzano. There is a manufacturing facility for the aperitif called Cinzano here, but there are many towns in different provinces named Cinzano, so it’s not really all that special. I had to take a picture of the sign, though!

Canale. A larger town (maybe 10,000 people). They had a nice farmer’s market, and yes, there were vegetables on offer. I bought 3 clementines and an apple for $1.50. Yes, that’s right—buying food at markets here is very cheap. Lunch at a random place here (the “typical” tagliatella with butter and sage) was pretty good.

San Stefano Roero. Another hill town, a bit larger than Santa Vittoria. It had a decent center, but nothing special. Just outside of town, however, there was a church that had a set of Stations of the Cross. Actually there are a few churches in the area that are connected by these Stations, so that you start at Saint James and Saint Philip chapels and progress through them to end at Saint Sepulcher chapel. These Stations are called Sanctuario del Piloni. There’s a picture of the explanatory sign (in English).

San Damiano d’Alba is a larger town, but without anything of interest. There is, however, a large Campari plant just outside town…

Asti is one of the larger towns in the area and is the capitol of the province of Asti. It’s about the same size as Alba (maybe a bit larger), but it’s much better connected to the Autostrade and rail lines. If I were choosing again, I might stay in Asti rather than in Alba, although Alba has better restaurants.

Isola d’Asti Villa. This is a very charming hill town. It has a tower, and the homes in the small center are beautifully kept. Just like out of a storybook. It’s twice the size Santa Vittoria, but that isn’t saying a lot.

Neivi is another small hill town. It has a castle (the Counts of Castelborgo lived here) in which the Nebbiolo grape was first pressed into Barbaresco wine. The Counts did the experimentation that yielded the wine type. There is also a garden with the castle, but neither has been kept up.

For all it’s fame, the village of Barbaresco is tiny. Hardly anything but a church, a winery, and a town hall (oh, and two 1 star Michelin restaurants). There may be 50-100 homes in the village. Most of the people live out in the district, nearer the vineyards. The hills surrounding Barbaresco undulate gently and are covered in grapevines. It’s really very enchanting.

Tre Stelle is really just a bump in the road and hardly qualifies as a “suburb” of Barbaresco. But this is where one of Barbaresco’s two Michelin 1 star restaurants is located. I stopped to look, but it was closed.

Back in Alba, I had dinner at a restaurant/pizzeria, called Cincilla (and pronounced chinchilla) I found and tried to eat at on Sunday (but they were way too crowded for that). The food was “typical Piemontese” meaning I had the tagliatelle, but with white truffles (paying the 25 euro premium for some shavings).

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.

Truffle festival in Alba

October 14, 2007 Sunday

I didn’t sleep very well, but that’s life with jetlag. The hotel provides a breakfast buffet with cold cereals, assorted cold meats, pastries/breads, juices, and coffee. Not bad, but not exactly what I wanted.

Today is the “Fiera del Tartufo Bianco d’Alba”, or translated: The Alba Festival for the White Truffle. It runs 5-6 Sundays in Oct and Nov. And it draws an amazing number of people. Every piazza in the city is transformed into a sort of farmer’s market. There’s honey, salumi, cheeses, arts and crafts, flowers, clothes, etc., but no vegetables. And the truffle exhibition in a large hall that also includes a number of booths with wines, cheeses, etc. The truffle exhibition hall was redolent of truffles. The Alba white truffle is a rare thing: it sells for about 5000 euros per kilogram (that’s $142/ounce). A truffle is a fungus, sort of like a mushroom, so a white truffle about half the size of a fist weighs about an ounce. Pretty pricey, but wonderful to taste. Black truffle is also on display, but it sells for a small fraction of the price of a white truffle and isn’t as rare, so it takes 2^nd billing.

There are so many people at the festival that there aren’t enough restaurants to feed them all. It’s almost impossible to get anything to eat for lunch as there are lines to get in everywhere. I got a table at one place, but was ignored by the staff, and left after 45 minutes of waiting.

Dinner tonight is in Alba at Osteria dell’Arco (Michelin guide recommendation). While Barolo isn’t as expensive here as it is at home, it still isn’t cheap. Most bottles in restaurants are 35-75 euro ($49-$105), or about the same as in the wine shops at home. Gaja wines are still pricey, no matter where.

Arrival in Italy

October 12-13, 2007 Friday/Saturday

After many weeks of planning and at least one postponement, I finally left San Francisco on British Airways for Italy. Late. 1-1/2 hours late. But there’s a silver lining to this cloud. My 3 hour 45 minute layover in London was only 2 hours 15 minutes. And this time it seems I went the right way through the airport. The last time I went through Heathrow, I ended up going through passport control and security. This time there was no passport control (I guess last time I goofed and took a wrong turn). Anyway, I made it from one gate in Terminal 1 to another gate in Terminal 1 in only 1 hour! (I hate Heathrow.) By the way, by now it’s Oct. 13 and Saturday due to going forward 8 time zones to London (9 to Italy).

The flights were uneventful otherwise. At least British Air tries to feed you. The dinner SF to London wasn’t bad. Breakfast was interesting—a cold egg salad sandwich? They even served a lunch (sandwich) on the short flight from London to Milan. Their coffee is nasty! Stick with the tea. Figuring that there’d be no lunch on the London-Milan flight, I ate a sandwich in the terminal—it was lunchtime anyway. This was my first non-US dollar purchase. Ouch! One measly little sandwich for $12 (5 GB pounds)! The euro won't be quite as bad, but still the exchange rates are painfully high.

Arrival in Milan Malpensa airport was a breeze. I picked up my Hertz rental car, which was supposed to have a Neverlost GPS system. I found out it was a portable GPS (gee, for what they charged, I could have bought one). Anyway, after a bit of experimenting, I figure out how to stick it to the windshield, plug it in, and set it up. Strangely, the European map system it uses doesn’t let you enter the street number. It only gets you to the street. I wonder what happens if the street is one of those that has multiple disconnected segments?

So off I go. The GPS is not helpful. It says go to the route. What route? So I follow the signs for the airport exit. Still no help. I figure I need to head toward Torino (aka Turin in English) so I go off that way. Finally the GPS says something: the dreaded “recomputing route”, meaning, of course, that you took a wrong turn. Even worse, the highway exit toward Torino is closed. Okay, recomputing route. The GPS takes me along a 2-lane road for 30 minutes before finally getting me on a multi-lane toll road. Very scenic, but it’s telling me that I have 2 hours 30 minutes to Alba. When I looked it up on the Michelin website, it said 1 hour 30 min. Not happy, and being tired, I’m cranky. Fortunately, being a geek, I know better than to yell at dumb machines (yeah, right).

So we take the scenic route out of Milan and get on the tollway. I’m going along swimmingly when the GPS tells me I need to exit to get to Alba. But I’m nowhere near Alba and on a perfectly good 6 lane tollway that has (infrequent) signs telling me Alba is straight ahead (as I remembered when I looked at the paper map Hertz kindly provided). Of course, at this point you’re thinking: uh, oh. It was really weird, you could see where the car was going on the display, but the GPS didn’t think there was a road there. It thought I was driving 85 mph out in the middle of some field or something. And you could see the route it wanted me to take off to the side, sort of parallel. So I figure that the GPS maps haven’t been updated in a while. I also figure it’s time to pull over and check the paper map to be sure. Yep, it clearly shows a major toll way from Alessandria to Asti and Asti to Alba (yes, that’s Asti as in Asti spumante and Barbera d’Asti).

So I ignore the GPS and follow the highway. Good thing. It cut about 20 min off the trip and landed me right back on the route the GPS wanted me to take going into Alba.

BTW, the A series toll ways in Italy have speed limits of about 66 mph/110 kph, but you’d get run over if you only went that fast. I was going 85-90mph and people were blowing past me going at least 110mph. At least they are very conscientious about staying to the right and keeping the left lane free for passing (a most welcome change from California).

The GPS got it wrong again as it tried to get me to the street my hotel was on. It told me to turn left into opposing traffic on a one-way street. After going past and getting the “recomputing route” treatment I got back to the same place. Luckily I saw the train station and a parking garage next to it. I knew from the hotel that this parking garage was where I’d have to park anyway. I unloaded and started schlepping my bags. It wasn’t far and I got to my room in Hotel Savona. Not a bad place. Large room (for an 80 euro/night place in Europe) and a large bathroom with shower, tub, bidet, and toilet.

I had lunch in Heathrow, so now I needed dinner. This is Italy where they eat late, right? Well, not in Alba. I took a shower and changed and went out looking for a restaurant at about 9:50. The story was the same: our kitchen is closed for the night (and it was Saturday night!). I went back to the hotel and asked the desk clerk—he gave me a few suggestions. Two of three were closed. The last, Buontempo, looked pretty nice and was very popular. Saturday seems to be a night for big groups to eat out—most of the restaurants I looked into had several tables of 6-12 people.

The manager of Buontempo chatted me up while I was waiting for a table and poured me a glass of Barolo (I wondered: how much is this going to cost?). I ordered the prix fixe menu at 28 euro: crudo di manzo all’Albese (like carpaccio), tagliatelle al sugo con porcini, vitello brasato a Barolo (veal braised in Barolo wine). I also got another glass of the Barolo and a bottle of sparkling water. Service was okay, and the food was good, but not great, and there were lots of rooms with lots of tables. It reminded me of Buca di Beppo back in Palo Alto (but with better food). After I was done, no one came by to see if I wanted the check. I saw another table leave and go upstairs to pay, so I followed.

The manager tapped some numbers on a calculator from some scribbles on a small piece of paper, typed a number into the cash register and printed off the receipt. 25 euros? I ordered a 28 euro prix fixe (but didn’t get the dessert). I had 2 glasses of Barolo (not a cheap wine, even here where it’s made) and a large bottle of water. Hey, I must have gotten a hell of a deal on the dessert! I left a nice tip. Some things do go right.