It was a sweet 9:30 start to the day. Enough time to linger over morning coffee and pop into the much-loved local bakery for a pastry en route to Piazza Giolitti. The Piemonte stage differs from all our others in that it is the only one where we get to go home every night and sleep in our own beds. It doesn't matter how much we enjoy each other's company, having our own space every day is bliss. Or as someone put it at 2am when we arrived home from Puglia, "I've never been so glad to see half the bus go!"
In any case, our first day was the "winey" one, according to our Super-Tutor Alessandra. We began at the Negro Winery in Roero, a family run business since the 1670s. Our guides trekked us up and down hills in the slowly burgeoning heat, and patiently answered our multitude of questions. Seeing as we'd just finished a course on Organic Agriculture, there were plenty. While the winery isn't certified organic, their practices are fascinating. The soil is very sandy in Roero, and creating more structure is important to make wines with complexity. So, they use red worms, originally imported from California, to work on the compost. These worms only leave the piles when they are finished eating through the organic matter, but are extremely sensitive to antibiotics transferred by the creators of the manure. If they're exposed to them, they die. Interesting...
On our hike up the hillside, a particular grove of trees was pointed out to us - the truffle hunters' land. While technically owned by the winery, this patch is prime truffle land and is much sought after in October. The winery keeps the property in perfect shape, and I believe gets some of the bounty. Definitely a good place to return to in Fall...
Our tour continued in the cantine and cellars. Bottling was going on for one of their Arneis, and it was interesting to see the process. While I thoroughly enjoyed bottling at Le Vieux Pin and La Stella last summer, we use a bottling truck there. I moved back and forth between a few of the jobs, but the different steps - sanitizing bottles, filling, labeling and sealing - were all tucked in a loop and so I couldn't see the whole process in one fell swoop, like at Negro. After communing with barrels and seeing the old and new methods of champenois, we were ushered upstairs by the owner for one of those fabulous meals we only experience on stage. Wines were paired with each course, and the meal finished with rounds of grappa.
Needless to say, the entire bus napped all the way back to Pollenzo. We groggily braced ourselves for our lecture in the cool of La Banca del Vino on our school campus to finish up our day. After a general history of wine-making, we tasted some more wines, discussed our findings and toured the wine bank. Meant to be a storage and educational facility for many unique and well-known wines, the cellar is a serious treasure-trove of Italian wines. I clearly have many more varietals to discover this year!
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