Alba

Alba is the wine centre of Piemonte, which we have been calling by its English name, Piedmont. The white truffle season is in full swing and the town was thronged with tourists, probably the majority Italian.
We made our way past the busy market stalls to our truffle seminar.

The seminar was delivered in Italian by a local expert and translated sentence by sentence by Mark Millon, our food and wine adviser. At the end of the seminar we were presented with 5 truffles to examine, one local black and the rest white. We had to express our opinion on the quality of each. One was past it. Threats of being forced to stay in and repeat the seminar must have been effective, as we all identified the reject and divided evenly about the order of the two top ones which were duly pronounced best by the expert.
Another local guide then joined us to point out the town's highlights, including a plaque in honour of teenage partisans who ejected the fascists in 1943 and held the town for 23 days before it was retaken, and the cathedral which as often is the case has layers of style stretching from Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Gothic Revival, and twenty first century modern.

An interesting frescoe showed Dominic embracing Francis: a temporary truce or a peace treaty agreeing to no poaching?

Lunch at La Piola ristorante introduced us to the top end of fine Piemonte sustenance.

Vitello Tonnato Carne Cruda e Insalata Russa (Raw Veal with tuna mayonnaise and diced boiled vegetables with the same mayonnaise) (Arneis)

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Agnolotti del Plin Di Fonduta con a parte una Piccola Misticanza (Homemade fresh ravioli stuffed with fondue cheese topped with white truffles) (Nebbiolo)

Pears in Monsordo wine with cinnamon ice cream (Moscato d'Asti)

The meal concluded after some considerable time with espresso coffee and a wood matured moscato grappa.

We explored some more of the town, including a truffle exporting shop (in anticipation of future enthusiasm) and in the late afternoon travelled to Castello Grinzane Cavour, a vineyard eneteco castle name for a famous Italian where we sampled a spiced Barolo chinato, something akin to vermouth (Cinzano is also native to this region.)

The grounds are decorated with variegated heather

Some low hanging fruit

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