MEMORIES OF PIEMONTE: In search of northern Italy's classic food and wine
- 16 hours ago
- 11 min read
As the world turns it's gaze to northern Italy for the Olympic Games, I'm recalling my visits to this land of stunning landscapes, food and wine
Words and photography
By CINDA CHAVICH
Italians believe that their food traditions are vital to their culture, the social glue that connects generations and goes to the very core of their everyday lives.
In Italy, food is a very serious subject —. a profound expression of identity, central to community and regional pride. So passionately protected, Italian cuisine and food culture was recently granted Intangible Cultural Heritage status by UNESCO, the first country to receive this recognition.
Quality should never be compromised — for speed or profit — and whether it’s that perfect morning espresso, individually pulled in a small café, a plate of hand-cut pasta, or a traditional bowl of thick chickpea and tripe soup (the Cisra of Dogliani), authentic food and traditional recipes are valued beyond all else.
And one only needs to travel to Piedmont in northern Italy — the centre of their Slow Food universe and the historic Kingdom of Savoy — to see just how good that simple, and fiercely prized, local food and drink can be.
PIEDMONT'S PLEASURES
It’s here that Italians celebrate the famous and rare white truffle of Alba, indulging in expensive slivers of them the moment they are unearthed from the forests each fall.
It’s here where you’ll find Cherasco snails and the 2,500-pound, Piedmontese “fat ox” — surely the world’s largest breed of beef cattle — both on the menu in the medieval villages that dot the steep vineyard regions famous for Barolo, Barbaresco and Dogliani wines.
SLOW FOOD CENTRAL
So it’s not surprising that it’s also here that Carlo Petrini launched the Slow Food movement that has infiltrated the culinary consciousness of food lovers everywhere, founding the University of Gastronomic Sciences (a.k.a. Slow Food U), the first graduate school to make gastronomy a serious field of study.
The campus in Pollenzo — set in the 19th-century estate of former King Carlo Alberto — offers a master’s degree in gastronomy, and there is a serious, almost ecclesiastical aura, throughout the sprawling facility. In the ancient cellars, an earnest student explains the significance of the Banco del Vino, where winemakers pay a fee to “deposit” cases of their best wines for posterity.
Even the modern Guido restaurant on campus — with its Michelin star, sleek wall of wine, and vaulted, cathedral-like space — pays almost religious homage to the region’s historic recipes.
The plate of fat, hand-pinched pinched agnolotti del plin, the pasta golden yellow from free range eggs and filled with veal and rabbit is the epitome of the art, each morsel dusted with grainy shards of Parmigiano Reggiano and bursting with juicy filling. The table falls reverentially silent as we consume our pasta course, beneath a black-and-white blow-up of the chef’s mother’s hands, pinching her own fresh pasta.
Pasta is only one traditional dish still made by mothers' hands for restaurants throughout the region — a testament to the depth of the commitment to “slow” (scratch-made, artisanal) food here.
At the top of the beautiful hilltop town of Barbaresco, Trattoria Antica Torre sits next to the ancient fortifications, overlooking a valley of vines, and before lunch, Steffania Albarello is in the kitchen cutting the famous tagiatelle that she makes fresh here every day like her father once did.
In the wonderful I Bologna trattoria in Rocchetta Tanaro, we gather with winemaker Rafaela Bologna of Braida to dine with her family. And while the young Giuseppe (Beppe) Bologna cooks refined versions of simple traditional courses with his two Japanese sous chefs – vitello con tonnato, perfect paper-thin slices of pink veal with a velvety version of the creamy tuna sauce, and crema di cardi (creamy cardoons) — it is his mother who stands folding thin sheets of fresh yellow pasta over dabs of ground veal, pork and cheese, pressing them into her delicate pillows of agnolotti, moments before we inhale them bathed butter and fresh sage.
TO TURIN
Turin (or Torino) is the capital of Piedmont, the city known for hosting the 2006 Winter Olympics (and just next door to Lombardy and Milano where the games are underway 20 years later in 2026). Piedmont (Piemonte) was once home of the royal House of Savoy, the seat of power before the country’s many kingdoms were united nearly 150 years ago.
And while it’s no longer the political capital, Turin (Torino) is certainly the place to begin any gastronomical tour of the region. It’s the place where Slow Food holds its biennial Terre Madre gathering of farmers and food artisans from around the world, celebrating the ideal of eating fresh, seasonal, regional and hand-made foods.
This is where you’ll also find the original, and flagship, Eataly, a commercial food market-cum-museum, founded in 2007 and dedicated to the sale of slow, artisinal Italian food. Filling a repurposed industrial building where vermouth was once made, there are market “stalls” selling fresh vegetables, whole legs of prosciutto di Parma, local Castelmagno cheese and hand-formed pasta, even fresh white truffles, and eight café-bars where you can perch on a stool to taste them all in traditional dishes.
Today there’s another Eataly location in downtown Turin, too — Eataly Lagrange — with a rooftop terrace and cooking classes.
STYLISH SWEETS
Along with their devotion to history, the city’s food merchants also embrace the Italian love of fashion and style.
Guido Gobino is a typical case in point. Turin’s top chocolatier — famed for his exquisitely smooth rendition of the typical Piemontese chocolate confection, giandujotto, filled with ground local hazelnuts — has a new shop in downtown Turin that combines tradition with his own whimsical innovations. And if you’re in Milan, there are elegant little Gobino chocolate shops there, too.
We marvel at his beautifully-wrapped Tourinot chocolates, stylishly displayed in a historic, wood-paneled storefront, then slip downstairs with the elfin Gobino to his “extreme chocolate tasting room.” The private enclave below the shop — created for special tastings — is designed to eliminate any distraction to the gastronomic experience. The moment we sit on the round, lavender, leather sofa, the transluscent floor is bathed in fuchsia light and an oversized digital clock, the large numerals projected on the smooth white walls, stops.
So “time stands still” as Gobino guides us through a sampling of his intensely-flavored miniatures — dark chocolate with Thai ginger and Sicilian Noto lemon or infused with Sardinian saffron, the bitter 80% cacao chocolate enhanced with grains of Arriba cocoa from Ecuador. While he’s perfectly serious about the flavour nuances in his chocolate creations, it’s an Andy Warhol/Austin Powers-esque experience — stylish and sexy, and somewhat silly.
“Perfect with spirits, fine wine and rum,” muses the smiling Gobino as his staff quietly circulates with cups of espresso and tea. “There is tradition and there is passion — these are conversation chocolates, to think about and talk about.”
From this surreal stop we head into the countryside, ground zero for Piedmont’s gastronomic and wine culture.
DOGLIANI’S DELIGHTS
We arrive in the hill town of Dogliani — home the serious DOCG Dolcetto di Dogliani wines — on market day, and just in time for the annual La Cisrà festival, celebrating the harvest.
In the market square, local winemakers are pouring their fresh cherry-flavoured and bittersweet Dolcetto wines alongside big bowls of rustic soup, thick with vegetables, chickpeas and chewy tripe.
It’s a somewhat challenging combination for those not familiar with such peasant traditions, but like many Piemontese foods, it’s been served this way for hundreds of years. And like so many things in this quiet corner of northern Italy, it's just one more revelation for our group of food and wine writers.
Set in the Langhe hills, south of Barolo, Dogliani is a charming town surrounded by small wineries.
In the fall, the Dolcetto vines turn brilliant red and gold, the sloping vineyards a riot of colour.
Dolcetto di Dogliani is one of the latest Italian wines to achieve the top DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) status, putting it into good company among the most serious Barolo and Barbaresco wines of Piedmont.
And several of the small artisanal producers — including San Fereolo, Pecchenino, Einaudi, Anna Maria Abbonna and Chionetti — are making amazingly rich and intense red wines with this local grape.
A stop in the local enoteca offers a chance to purchase some of the fine wines on offer.
It’s a perfect food wine for the things that they eat here, from a copper pot of the famed Cherasco snails, braised in butter, to bolito misto, a boiled dinner featuring all manner of rich and odd cuts of beef, literally tongue and cheek, from nose to tail.
Restaurants that specialize in the rustic bolito misto meal celebrate the local beef, from the region’s famed Piedmontese cattle.
These massive white beasts — that reach up to 2,500 pounds, or twice the size of the average Canadian cow — stand higher than a tall man at the rump end, and are only slaughtered when they reach five years of age. The beef from these purebred cattle is as revered as the animals themselves, paraded through the town of Carrù. before the annual show and sale each December.
Piedmonte literally translates as “at the foot of the mountains” and nowhere is this more evident than in the steep vineyards of Dogliani, gateway to the “Alta (upper) Langhe”. The rugged landscape has long been home to small family farms, growers who work their steep vineyards by hand, using traditional methods.
Hazelnut trees grow among the vineyards and it’s common to find nuts for sale in the fall, alongside the new wine. You’ll also find the local hazelnut cake – torta di nocciole – on every menu.
The cheeses made here are “mountain style” — the DOP Castelmango made from the milk of cows that graze in high alpine meadows, and the Murazzano from sheep’s milk. On the menu at small local restaurants, like Trattoria Marsupino in Briaglia, you’ll find the local cheeses in fonduta — cheese sauces — served over the local hand-cut tagliatelle pasta or agnolotti.
While not every town has an important restaurant, most have a communal enoteca or bottega where you can taste the local wine.
In Dogliani, the Bottega del Vino is located in the vaulted cellars beneath the historic town hall, a former 16th-century monastery, where you can taste wine from nearly 50 local producers.
TASTING TRUFFLES
While Alba is home to the Ferrero Rocher factory — turning out the familiar foil-wrapped bonbons and Nutella for the world — it is the white truffle of Alba that is most revered food product from this region.
During truffle season — from October through to December — international buyers, chefs and food lovers converge on Alba to obtain the freshest and largest specimens of tartufo bianco, the world’s most expensive and rare fungus.
There are weekend truffle markets in the narrow medieval streets of Alba, and truffle menus in restaurants throughout the region, where you can have a few grams of the aromatic, musky fungus shaved over your plate of pasta for an upcharge of a mere 40-50 euros.
But perhaps the best place to enjoy your truffle fix is in the Michelin starred All’Enoteca, chef David Palluda’s stellar restaurant above Roero’s Enoteca Regionale in Canale, an elegant room with impeccable service and incredible food.
After an amuse bouche — paper cones of crispy fried anchovies and a bite of tuna and roasted yellow pepper — there’s a litany of delicacies, from rare duck breast topped artfully with foie gras to an addictive combination of soft boiled egg, cheese fonduta and shaved white truffles, a simple combination defies description.
At about $90 (Cdn), it's wildly expensive, but a most unforgettable poached egg, indeed.
BARBARESCO AND BAROLO
There are so many important and interesting wine regions to explore within the beautiful, hilly Langhe DOC of Piedmont.
Go 10 km east from Alba and you’re in Barbaresco. Go south and you’re in Barolo.
The former is the kind of gorgeous hilltop hamlet that simply says Italy — sitting high above the Nebbiolo vineyards that are shrouded in fog first thing in the morning.
Step into the Produttori del Barbaresco, the local co-operative of 50 producers, known for their fine wines, to taste.
Then stay for lunch next door at Trattoria Antica Torre, where the hand-rolled and cut tarajin noodles are part of every meal, and in truffle season they let you select your own truffle at the table, then buy it and shave it over your meal at will.
Continue along the Tanaro River to Rocchetta Tanaro, to visit Braida’s winery to taste their oak-aged Barbera, and dine at the wonderful trattoria run by the Bologna family.
Not only do they have a “cellar” in the dining room where you can choose your own bottle, the specialties, like Vitello con Tonno (pink slices of veal with a creamy tuna sauce) and tiny, hand pinched agnolotti del plin may be the best you’ll ever taste. Don’t miss the crispy grissini and mother-in-law’s tongues at the local Fongo family bakery.
ASTI AND ENVIRONS
Paulo Saracco is the King of Moscato, taking this the sweet low-alcohol sparkler from Asti into new premium territory. The aromatic grape makes a beguiling still aperitif, too — the famed Moscato d’Asti — sweet yet mouth watering, here in the poor soils in vineyards that are almost vertical, and Saracco is one of 50 producers who still coax a crop from the steep, terraced terrain.
The village Castiglione Tinella, with its ancient streets and small Albergo Castiglione hotel, makes a good base for exploring Asti or neighboring Roero.
Plan to eat in the restaurant of the Bottega del Vino here, or you can have a simple meal or a glass of wine at the tiny Verde Rame Osteria.
Otherwise plant to stay at the Villa Tiboldi outside Canale, an elegant inn next to Malvira winery. With a fine restaurant and cooking school, this is the perfect place for a foodie in truffle season.
SNAIL CITY
Cherasco is another of Piedmont’s pretty hilltop towns — home to museums and galleries set in medieval palaces, and the International Snail Culture Institute was born, snail capital of the world.
But if lumache in garlic butter aren’t your style, you’ll want to check out the chocolate versions at Barbero Cioccolato a charming historic chocolate and pastry shop (on the national registry of historic shops) where they specialize in combining the local hazelnuts with chocolate in all kinds of confections.
Bring home a bag of their dark chocolate kisses (Baci di Cherasco, made here since 1881) for someone you love.
IF YOU GO:
It's easy to drive from Turin through the heart of the Langhe wine region, stopping in Bra enroute to Dogliani, and returning via Barolo, Alba and Barbaresco.
The route along these classic Piedmont wine roads comes with spectacular scenery and the chance to stay in lovely little hotels and dine in great restaurants along the way. Budget at least three days (or more) to explore this 180-km circle route (3 hours of total driving time without stops) along hilly, winding country roads (Strada Provinciale).
In Barolo visit the wine museum. Go for the weekly market in Dogliani and plan to taste the Dolcetto wines in the local Bottega del Vino. Stop in spectacular hillside villages for lunches with views across the vineyards in all seasons, and try to visit in the fall for the white truffle season in Alba. Explore the local cuisine — the cheeses, truffles, hazelnut chocolates, snails — in small trattorias, fine Michelin star restaurants, gourmet specialty shops and chocolatiers. Serious wine lovers can visit during annual tasting events and festivals https://www.langhevini.it/en/
Make sure to get out of the car and explore some of the walking routes that connect many of these historic hilltop towns, too (Strada del Barolo, Strada dei Grandi Vini di Langa) — a local tourist office can point you in the right direction!
I visited Turin and the wine regions of Dogliani, Barolo and Barbaresco on a press trip in 2007. It was one of the my most memorable food journeys, thanks to the generous winemakers of Dogliani who introduced us to their region's artisanal food and wine, and especially to Nicoletta Bocca, the proprietor of the biodynamic San Fereolo winery and a fierce defender of Dogliani's Dolcetto. Her winemaking skill and passion for all things in this beautiful and rugged region of northern Italy is unmatched.
©CindaChavich2026