Piedmont

We arrived back in Milan and headed out to Malpensa airport to collect our Peugeot and continue to Relais Rocca Civalieri our lodgings for our 5 days in Piedmont. Somehow we'd left GPS off our list for our new Peugeot so using more traditional means we successfully navigated the Italian roads and arrived in Quattordio late Saturday afternoon. Dinner in-house our first night in Rocca Civalieri's gourmet restaurant. On our new best friend Ciro's (the head waiter) recommendation we enjoyed the first of two degustation style menus featuring samples of the local cuisine with a slight Asian influence. One highlight was the noodles with green vegetables in a simple butter sauce. Ciro ensured we had a good bottle of the local Barbera to accompany our meal.

Sunday we headed to the town of Alba and did the usual tourist wandering into some beautiful old churches. From there we headed to the wine village of La Morra (Nat's recommendation) perched high in the hills overlooking the surrounding vineyards.

La Morra is a beautiful northern Italian village with wonderful views across the amazing expanse of vineyards that make this are famous. We lunched on local cheese and cold meats with a glass of Borolo. From La Morra we headed into Asti and walked around on a very quiet Sunday afternoon, sitting in briefly on a baptism at the cathedral.

Sunday night Ciro recommended a ma & pa trattoria just out of Asti - La Greppia. Beautiful home made local food. Broph had the Gnocci, Clare the Scallopini of course accompanied by local Barbera. The food all prepared by nona so we included nona's chocolate pie and zabaglione for Dolci. Thanks to Ciro and nona.

Monday we decided to visit Alessandria on route down to the big outlet centre at Serravalle Scrivia where we indulged in a little retail fun helping along the Italian economy. Back at Rocca Civalieri Ciro served us drinks before we took on the 7 course degustation menu for dinner. 

Ciro introduced us to a Sicilian rossi for dinner but also included a Spritz for starters, a sweet desert wine plus Grappa for afters. The Brophs retired for the night overly well fed, tipsy on too much wine and thinking that Ciro might be the sort of friend we maybe didn't really need!