Grinzane Cavour Castle
Count Cavour's castle, the regional wine library and November's truffle auction.
Mayor for seventeen years
Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, was mayor of Grinzane from 1832 to 1849 and experimented in its vines.
The first Enoteca Regionale
Founded in 1967, the oldest in Piedmont: you taste and buy inside the castle itself.
The World Truffle Auction
Every year between late October and November, linked live to auction rooms around the world.
Ten minutes from Alba
On the hill between Alba and Barolo: the natural first stop of a day in the Langhe.
An eleventh-century castle with a wine library inside
Grinzane castle stands on an isolated hill between Alba and Barolo and is visible from the whole valley. The building dates from the middle of the 11th century; over the centuries it passed through several Piedmontese noble families, among them the Benso di Cavour. The most famous of them, Camillo Benso, was mayor of Grinzane from 1832 to 1849, while still very young, and it was here that he worked on the vineyards and on farming methods before turning to the unification of Italy.
Today the castle holds an ethnographic museum, the historic halls, a restaurant and above all the Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour, founded in 1967 and the first of its kind in Piedmont: a selection of the region's wines to taste and buy on the spot.
The truffle auction
Between late October and November, during the Truffle Fair, the castle hosts the World Alba White Truffle Auction: the season's finest specimens go under the hammer linked live to auction rooms abroad, with the proceeds going to charity. This is the event where kilo truffles reach the figures that end up in the newspapers.
The best moment to come up here, though, is still any ordinary autumn afternoon, when the hill around is orange and from the courtyard you can see Barolo on one side and the whole arc of the Alps on the other.
Grinzane is the first stop
From here you drop down to Barolo and climb back to Serralunga: a full day, with a driver waiting outside.
