La Dolce Vita Wine Tours

Slow Food, Comfort Food

The Food Traditions of Piedmont and Parma

Tour Overview:

• Visit two wine regions: Barolo in Piedmont & Lambrusco in Emilia Romagna
• Private sit-down tastings at Ceretto & Conterno Fantino (Barolo) and Manicardi & Vittorio Graziano (Lambrusco)
• The annual truffle market in Alba
• Feast on artisan cheese and salumi during a buffet lunch at a cheese farm in the Alte Langhe
• Hands-on cooking lesson
• Visit artisan makers of Parmesan cheese, Prosciutto di Parma & balsamic vinegar

Emila Romagna’s reputation as a food capital goes back to Roman times, when butchers and bakers would proudly display their vocation on grave markers. It continued through the Renaissance, when upper-class epicures savored a variety of spiced, cured meats—an expensive delicacy devised by local pork butchers. During modern times, Bologna was a forerunner to international food destinations, acting as a magnet for gourmands for much of the past century. And no wonder. Its cuisine is the very definition of comfort food: slow-cooked ragús, soul-satisfying lasagna, mom-can’t-make-it-better chicken broth for tender tortellini. Plus, here’s where you’ll find the real deal in Prosciutto di Parma, crumbly Parmigiano-Reggiano, and aged balsamic vinegar, aka Aceto Balsamico Traditionale di Modena.

Piedmont has a different, but equally proud food tradition. The refined elegance of its cuisine owes to close ties with France: Piedmont was ruled by the royal house of Savoy for nearly two centuries, French was the language of diplomacy, and French customs in the kitchen and wine cellars freely traveled across their shared border. As a result, you’ll find butter and cream in risotto and pasta recipes, and truffles flecking rich egg dishes. And in wine, there’s Barolo, one of Italy’s first age-worthy reds, created by piemontese aristocrats who wanted to emulate Burgundy.

More recently, Piedmont has led the way in the Slow Food movement. As the story goes, Carlo Petrini, a food journalist from the town of Bra in Piedmont, was traveling to Rome in 1986. He was appalled to see that McDonald’s was about to launch its first outlet in Italy—on the famed Spanish Steps, no less. To resist this infiltration of fast food, he launched a countermovement, Slow Food, with the snail as its rebellious emblem. In 1989, the founding manifesto was signed in Paris by 15 countries. Today there are 132 countries with 800 chapters (including, no doubt, one near you!). Among its goals, Slow Food promotes biodiversity (via seed banks of heirloom varieties), the preservation of local food traditions, and small-scale processing, while educating about the hazards of monoculture, genetic engineering, and pesticides.

On this tour, SLOW FOOD in Piedmont comes together with COMFORT FOOD in Parma. We’ve scheduled it to coincide with Alba’s truffle fair in October, where you’ll find truffle hunters and artisans of cheese, honey, and chocolate peddling their ware. In both Piedmont and Parma, we’ll focus on food and wine in equal measure (like any good Italian).

SLOW FOOD, COMFORT FOOD will be on our tour calendar every other year. It alternates with SLOW FOOD FESTA, which coincides with the Salone del Gusto, Slow Food International’s biannual fair in Turin.