Langhe-Roero and Monferrato Vineyards

The hills south of Turin are one of the rare landscapes where a single crop has drawn the whole map. In the Langhe, the Roero and Monferrato, vine rows follow every contour of the slopes, hilltop villages and castles sit on the ridges between them, and the colours change through the year from fresh green to the rust and gold of autumn. In 2014 UNESCO inscribed six parts of this country as a single cultural landscape, about 10,800 hectares of core zone inside a buffer zone seven times larger.

Each of the six components tells a different chapter. The Langa of Barolo and the hills of Barbaresco are the home of two of Italy's most celebrated red wines, and the villages that gave them their names sit on the ridgelines above their own vineyards. Nizza Monferrato is the land of Barbera. Canelli is the birthplace of Italian sparkling wine, and beneath its streets lie the so-called underground cathedrals: long brick-vaulted galleries dug into the hillside, where bottles of classic-method spumante rest in constant cool darkness.

The Monferrato of the Infernot holds the strangest treasure. An infernot is a small private cellar hand-cut into Pietra da Cantoni, a soft sandstone laid down by the sea that once covered the area; with no light and no ventilation it keeps an even temperature and humidity year-round, ideal for a family's best bottles. These chambers, often carved by farmers themselves, are hidden under ordinary houses and are part of what makes the landscape a record of labour rather than a postcard.

The sixth component is the castle of Grinzane Cavour, first mentioned in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour — later the architect of Italian unification — lived here from 1830 and was mayor of Grinzane from 1832 to 1849, and he pushed the modernisation of local vineyards and winemaking. Since 1967 the castle has housed the regional wine shop of the Langhe, alongside an ethnographic museum and rooms devoted to Cavour. Pollen studies suggest vines were grown in these hills as early as the fifth century BC, when Piedmont was a meeting ground of Etruscans and Celts, and Pliny the Elder already praised the area for viticulture.

Getting there

The landscape spreads over the provinces of Cuneo, Asti and Alessandria; Alba, the market town of the Langhe, lies about 6 km from the nearest component, and Canelli, Nizza Monferrato and Asti are the natural bases for the Monferrato areas. The nearest airport is Cuneo International Airport (CUF), about 32 km away. The components are scattered across the hills, so a car or a bicycle is the practical way to move between them; many wineries and the underground cellars of Canelli receive visitors.