Wine Tours and local gastronomy
Along with wine, food and cooking play a key role in the make-up of the region. Piemonte’s cuisine is heavily influenced by French cooking and uses lots of marinated meats and vegetables, so it comes as no surprise to learn that the increasingly popular Slow Food movement started here, while the white truffles from Alba are considered to be Italy’s best.
Piemonte is considered the best organised region of Italy for wine tourism. Piemonte devotes over one hundred forty thousand acres to grapevines, it ranks 6th among the 20 Italian regions with a total annual wine production of about ninety million gallons, the region produces 44 DOC wines. The best known strictly Italian white varieties are Arneis, Cortese, and Erbaluce. It is the centre for Nebbiolo, felt by many to be Italy’s noblest red variety, the base of Italy’s world famous Barolo and Barbaresco wines. Other Italian red varieties include Barbera, Brachetto, and Dolcetto.
