At the start of the year, I bought a QoQa experience, consisting of 3 days, 2 nights in Castiglione Faletto at Il Torre, a really nice hotel, and also including a gourmet 4 course meal and a wine tasting at a local vineyard. Getting there (and back) was a 5h journey each way, with lots of beautiful scenery and… roadworks everywhere. The highway toll system in Italy takes some getting used to, but we managed.
Once we got there, we parked the car and started on the serious business of eating and drinking. The Cantina Communale was nice, but overpriced (seriously!). Dinner that evening was gorgeous, but they killed us with food. After the pasta course, we were already both full, and there were still mains and dessert to come. We struggled through the mains but conceded defeat to pudding. Katy is now officially obsessed with braised veal cheeks in wine. Then… grappa. Oooooh, grappa. It’s a good thing that the restaurant was literally next door to the hotel, otherwise we wouldn’t have made it.
The next day, after breakfast, we walked down into Barolo. We took the goat pass that the hotel had kindly told us to avoid by car, as a shortcut. The scenery was gorgeous. The flies though…. FUEGO!! (didn’t want to keep swearing, so I’d just yell fuego randomly). We stopped at Vite Colte on the way into Barolo and had a tasting of some very nice wines, then carried on towards the old town.
Katy was not impressed with the incline getting into Barolo. Expletives were heard. We were happy to see that the corkscrew museum was open – according to their website, it shouldn’t have been. We then visited the WiMu wine museum, which was really interesting, then had coffee and ice cream before trying to locate the cab we’d pre-booked to get back up the hill to Castiglione for our wine tasting at Monchiero. The wines were nice, but the highlight of that visit was the handmade salame!!
We went back to the hotel, had a nap, and then got ready for dinner at Convino. They again killed us with food, but more gently as we shared the plate of the pasta course. But still so.much.food!!! Katy fell in love with our waitress. She must think we’re completely bonkers.
On Friday morning, we had breakfast, checked out, went to pick up a few cartons of wine from Vite Conte and headed for a quick visit to Marolo – a grappa distillery – for a quick purchase, then Alba before heading home. Sadly, we just missed the opening of the Alba white truffle festival by a day, but it is what it is. We left at 12:30 and made it back to Family Dog in time to pick up a very happy (and very tired) Byron then finally made it back home.
