June 2025 – The beaver is a proud and noble animal

This year’s wine trip started under less than fully auspicious circumstances. I had a bout of food poisoning earlier in the week and my guts and kidneys were giving me grief. I hoped I wouldn’t need to go to the doctors while I was there but I was determined to not let it be a thing until it really needed to be a thing. Thankfully it never became a thing. Other things thinged… For one thing, the weather was HOT and stayed that way all weekend. At times, it was too hot and I was a giant, sweaty mess.

Lunch at Osteria dei Catari in Montforte d’Alba was really good. The food was nice, if a bit bougie for Italy, but super tasty and catered to my allergies. In the afternoon, we had our first tasting at Sòt. That was interesting. While the family has been tending vines for generations, the current owner is the first one to start making his own wine after getting a degree in oenology. It’s still a young business, but it’s still grown from 5K to 70K bottles/year production. The wines need some… refinement, but they were perfectly acceptable. And they had two lovely dogs that had grown fat accepting bits of grissini from the tourists :)

Getting to the hotel, the AC in our room didn’t work. We tried to get it sorted out before dinner and the hotel said they’d look into it. Dinner was an unmitigated disaster. Bad service and shit food. Seriously shit. Worst-ever-meal-in-Italy level shit. Initially, we had menu choices. Then, they said that we had to pick one menu for everyone. Then, the restaurant chose the menu for us. Most people got out-of-a-frozen-packet spinach and ricotta ravioli. I got plain noodles with butter and a sage leaf. Instead of slow-cooked veal, we got scorched-earth overcooked trout (!?!?). I don’t even remember was desert was, but it was also shit. Service was so bad. They didn’t care. I asked for pepper when the pepper mill was empty and I got a couple of packets of ground pepper. In the end, we cut the meal as short as we could and went to bed. Or tried to. The AC in our (triple-occupancy) room was still not working. After an hour of back-and-forth with the front desk, some guys from maintenance, and more admin people, they were still hemming and hawing about not being to give us other rooms (there was only 1 triple room and it was useless) until they could clear it with the manager (not on site). By this point, it was almost midnight. We’d been up since 4am. We were hot and tired and tempers were fraying. They finally gave us rooms (though mine hadn’t been properly cleaned).

After a bit of a disappointing breakfast, we had a free morning in Alba, where we perambulated in search of leather bags, truffles, hazelnuts and bread & tomatoes before going to the first of our two tastings. Mascarello was a blast. Turns out they regularly do deliveries to Lausanne, so hopefully they’ll come over to organize a tasting at NR next year. We met the namesake of a wine I bought a case of. We had a blast and left in very good spirits. The next tasting, Marrone, had a bit of a sour note when the host tried to be a bit too informal in his presentation style and rubbed some people the wrong way and voices got raised. It was a shame, because the wine was good, the nibbles were very nice, but it sort of spoiled the mood. Dinner that evening at Osteria Murivecci turned that completely around. It was everything that the previous dinner was not: made with love, served with passion and generosity, and it was one of the high points of the trip.

The following – and last – day, we had two tastings. Castello di Neive had a gorgeous view and surroundings, and the wines were really nice. Francone was a gem. They’d opened just for us that they – they’re normally closed on sundays – and the hostess was enthousiastic about all the innovations the winemakers are trying to do, while staying faithful to local traditions. Then, it was time to head home.