Piedmontese Paradise

For not being the Alps, Piemonte is pretty damn lovely. It was warm and sunny, and there are vines covering every inch of rolling hillside and you can't throw a brick without it bouncing off the wall of one winery and through the window of another. And while trying to understand that amount of expensive wine is a rather intimidating prospect, it's also a very enticing project.

Our hostess offered a few suggestions of things to see, so after a walk to see the Cordero de Montezemolo Cedar (planted in 1856), we hopped in the car to go tour through some of the highlights of Piemonte; Monforte, Barolo, and Alba.

The road through Barolo was under construction, but it meant that there weren't any cars in the tiny, tiny town that gave its name to one of the world's best wines. We got a nice, cheap lunch at a sandwich shop, who offered a cheese plate of what looked to be good, artisanal cheeses, though none of them were especially interesting or tasty. Quite disappointing.

However, Monforte was a rather nice town. There was an interesting church in the middle, which was built in the early 1900s, and was mostly made of concrete, but nicely decorated concrete. It is beautifully painted on the inside, and there's a basketball hoop in the parking lot. The old church on top of the hill wasn't quite so impressive, but the view was fabulous. We could see the Alps to the West and the Apennines to the South East, and everything in between.

All of that cultural and geographical appreciation made us a bit thirsty, so we found a wine bar and spent the next two hours drinking and eating complimentary prosciutto and lardo. I am very supportive of the wonderful Italian tradition of bringing delicious cured meats with each round, so there's no reason to leave once you've found the perfect warm, sunny spot to drink. We worked our way through some good Nebbiolo d'Alba and such, and found a great Prosecco, the name of which I've now forgotten.

It may have been the wine, or it may have been the GPS, or it may have been confusing road signs, but somehow our route between Monforte and Alba ended up going through the middle of a vineyard; I mean, we were dodging down rows of vines, trying to find our way down off of a mountain, in paths that were designed  more  for tractors than for sedans, and the huge plume of dust making our passage particularly noticeable. And being "off-the-GPS-grid" is a bit unnerving, especially when reaching the closest road means cutting across rows of vines.

Eventually we emerged from behind a "Private Property: No Entry" sign (so it all worked out ok), and continued on to Alba. The couple of streets that make up the pedestrian center of town are quite large, and lined with shopping. It was getting to be tired and hungry and cranky time, and rather than spending the next hour trying to find a good restaurant, we decided to take advantage of our patio and have a picnic. I bought a bottle of Brachetto d'Acqui, a delightful, fruity, sparkling red wine, and Julianna got a gigantic ball of burrata and some marinated artichoke hearts. With a cone of gelato as an apéritif, we had a really lovely meal. And probably thanks to our "CD" [corps diplomatique] license plates, the policeman eyeballing the car when we arrived, 10 minutes after our parking meter expired, didn't give us a ticket. A wonderful end to a wonderful day (though the sunset wasn't quite as impressive as the previous evening).