Piedmont Events

The Langhe calendar is agricultural before it is cultural: what happens here happens because something is ready to be harvested, dug or sold. Autumn is the busy season by a wide margin.

Alba’s white truffle fair

Alba holds its Fiera Internazionale del Tartufo Bianco on weekends from early October into early December. The core of it is a sale room where truffles are weighed, inspected and argued over, with tastings and cooking events around it. Prices move week to week with the weather, because the yield does. Accommodation across the whole district tightens for the duration.

The Palio degli Asini

First Sunday of October, in Alba. The town’s districts race donkeys, which behave as donkeys do, and the event is deliberately a parody — it was started in answer to a neighbouring town’s horse palio. The procession beforehand is in medieval costume and is taken more seriously than the race.

The truffle auction at Grinzane Cavour

In November the castle at Grinzane Cavour hosts the world truffle auction, where the largest specimens of the season are sold by video link to bidders abroad, with the proceeds going to charity. It is a single afternoon and the figures are reported nationally.

Cheese, and the harvest

Bra hosts Cheese, a large biennial gathering of raw-milk producers organised by Slow Food, in September of odd-numbered years. The Nebbiolo harvest runs late, through late September and October, and Barolo and La Morra are working rather than receiving while it does.

October is the month everything overlaps, and it is the hardest and dearest time to find a room in the Langhe. Late spring is the quiet alternative, with the vines green and nothing being sold.