A Postcard from Piedmont

A short drive from Turin, this corner of Piedemont unfurls into fields and mountains, cobbled villages and narrow roads populated by the occasional Fiat Panda and rickety truck. It’s wine country—rows of Barbaresco and Barolo vines—framed by the mighty Alps. It’s the place where the ‘slow food’ movement was born. In the misty hills and forests close to the towns of Alba and Asti, men in rubber boots and quilted jackets hunt for truffles in the chilly dawn. We meet Massimo, a pallapugno champion, a sport that exists in only a few parts of the country, and dig up black truffles with Pierro and his impressively-rotund dog, Olga. (More on them later) 

In the morning we reconvene at the town’s open-air food market. Locals haggle and gossip. They inspect tomatoes and root vegetables for freshness, or stand in the morning sunshine in quiet contemplation, before returning to the haggling and gossip. We drive towards nowhere in particular. Another town square, shutters and ochre walls. Through the forest with Olga the truffle dog, eyes covered by her wooly coat, nose square to the ground. “She’s the best dog I’ve ever had,” says Pierro, “because she’s so slow. She takes her time.”  

From up in the hills, the sun sets on Piedmont in shades of violet, bruised red and, finally, deep purple. The snow-capped alps soon covered by nightfall.