Asti

The idea for this particular trip to Italy, and more specifically, a day of wine exploration in and around the Barolo region, started at a wine dinner we attended back in 2024 at the Vancouver International Wine Festival. With friends, we attended a dinner paired with outstanding wines from around Piedmont and my wife and I became enamoured with the idea of traveling back to Italy and exploring some of the wines in that region. We have had some wonderful wine explorations in Burgundy and Champagne, the Okanagan, and Napa and Sonoma, and were eager to have a lovely day eating and drinking in another special place.

We secured a local guide and driver, Stefania, who arranged the details for our day with a focus of showing us a couple of smaller wineries. She met us at the train station in Asti and after some getting to know each other over an espresso she drove us to our first stop in La Morra. Luckily for us, it was day one of the nebbiolo harvest for Stroppiana. Look at all those grapes!

First harvest day at Stroppiana winery in La Morra, Italy

Continue reading →

Maybe it is because I’m heading to a Hawksley Workman concert tonight and that his song “Birds in Train Stations” became a soundtrack for my wife and me during our recent visit to Italy. It seems a reasonable way to title this quick reflection of a trip that had us spending a bit of time navigating Italy’s notoriously not on schedule trains as we crossed from Milan to Turin to Asti and eventually on to small towns on the east coast of Lake Como. I mean, if you’ve ever traveled in Italy, take a listen to this song and grin at this line:

“birds in train stations
hear the same announcements everyday
except the ones in italy because there’s always some delay
and they move at a different pace”

Pretty much spot-on. At the end of the day, a national day-long train strike and a host of other trains that had a loose association with any concept of time became laughter and opportunity inducing more than anything (Strike? Let’s spend an unexpected night in Bellano!). Italy might be the only place on earth that can attempt to simultaneously frustrate you, then ask for forgiveness with offers of 5pm spritzes, plates of heavenly agnolotti in broth, stunning natural beauty, and impossibly amazing coffee in the most unlikely of places.

The two weeks were perfect. I cried at the beauty of a ballet at La Scala. My wife and I drank Barolo and Barbaresco that completely changed my view of what those wines can be. I lounged hours away looking out over the snow-capped Alps from the absurdly-sized deck of our Turin apartment. We wandered. We ate (oh my god, we ate). We were gifted homemade limoncello from a favourite restaurant in Milan that we used to toast good-night to each day along the way. I drove a tiny Fiat 500 with the roof down along twisty mountain roads. And maybe the best part of the entire trip…. was just being in the moment and letting all of the beauty around me wash over me for two weeks.

Thanks Italy. You were pretty great. Even with your annoying trains.