Barolo, autumn fog, and the start of white-truffle season in Piedmont
Piedmont in autumn is one of Italy's great quiet pleasures. Here is what to expect from Barolo, Alba and the truffle season, and when to go.
Piedmont keeps a lower profile than Tuscany, and people who love it tend to prefer it that way. In autumn, when the fog — the nebbia that gives Nebbiolo its name — settles into the Langhe valleys each morning and lifts by midday, the region is at its best.
This is Barolo country. The wine is made from Nebbiolo grown on these hills, and the best way to understand it is to taste it where it is grown, poured by the family who made it. Many of the finest producers are small, and a visit is a conversation as much as a tasting: the soil, the vintage, the long patience the wine demands.
Autumn is also white-truffle season, centred on the town of Alba. From roughly October, the prized tartufo bianco appears at market and on menus, shaved over fresh pasta and eggs. It is one of the great seasonal ingredients in Italian cooking, and tasting it at its source, in the weeks it is actually dug, is a different thing entirely from finding it on a menu months later.
Between the vineyards and the table, the Langhe rewards slow travel: hilltop villages, long lunches, a landscape of ordered vines that turns gold and rust as the season deepens. The pace is unhurried and the crowds are thin.
If you would like to visit Piedmont, plan for autumn if you can, ideally from October into November for the truffle, and give yourself time to move slowly between the wine estates and the towns.