As part of planning a trip to the Piedmont and Tuscany areas of Italy in October 2023, I came across OneontheHill Homes. I reached out to Chiara to find out about the homes. They all looked inviting but were outside of my allocated budget. However, as I looked through their website I found that they provided Sommelier Wine Tours and Cooking Classes.
As I perused the “One Day in Langhe with a Somm” I was hooked. While touring Portugal and Spain, we encountered a very different process for visiting a winery than I am used to in Napa/Sonoma or Washington or Oregon. In the US, I visit a winery mostly to walk in the vineyards and observe their viticultural practices. Then, I go inside the tasting room to do a quick tasting of the wines. I usually find the tasting room servers know very little about the wines and their terroir. I just want to get a sense of the wine quality and maybe buy a few bottles. I rarely call ahead for a reservation.
When we got to Portugal and Spain, it turns out everyone wants you to have a reservation. They also expect you to visit for several hours and eat some food along with tasting the wine. On our Italy trip, I decided I needed an education on how to visit a European winery. The more I looked at the OneOnTheHill somm tour, the more I decided I would engage Pier to guide us on our tour. As luck would have it, Pier was guiding a wine club couple on our arranged day, so we got to meet Nicola.
Nicola picked us up at our agriturismo (Cascina Barac) and drove us to our morning winery visit at Paitin in Neive, Italy. The winery was founded in 1796. Luca is the 8th generation of the Elia family to carry on the art of wine making.
In the small world synchronicity, Luca had just arrived back in Nieve from Seattle where he was meeting with his US wine distributor.
We started our tour on the patio overlooking the hills of Barbaresco. As with most of the Langhe region, there are vineyards in every direction.
The tasting room manager took us on a tour of a blend of the old and new in winemaking.
The history was fascinating, but I wanted to taste the artistry that this multi generation family puts into their wines. We adjourned to the tasting room.
As we were introduced to the many fantastic wines, we also experienced a new Riedel glass variant for Nebbiolo.
The wines were fabulous. We realized that this was going to be an expensive wine tasting as we had to ship back home some of this wine and acquire some Nebbiolo wine glasses.
Even though we were only halfway through our day of wine tasting, I knew we had to join the OneOnTheHill wine club. We were only going to experience two wineries in the Langhe region on this day. The wine club would allow us to experience several more each year.
What do you do after a fabulous morning wine tasting in Barbaresco? Have an amazing Italian lunch in Barolo. After drinking red wines all morning, it was time for an interlude with a white wine (Arneis) from Roero. Our sommelier, Nicola, dropped us off at a restaurant in Seralunga d’Alba near where our afternoon wine tasting would occur. My lovely bride and I enjoyed a tasty meal of pasta and eggplant parmigiana.
In the small world department, I received an email a few days later from our favorite Oregon wine seller, that they just received some Paitin Barbaresco:
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I immediately sent a note to Marcus Looze, Avalon Wine proprietor, to share that we’d just visited the winery. He responded:
“Yes, lovely people and wines. My last visit there was the afternoon of my arrival in Milan and Luca was wrapping up with another group so…I hung out with his father for an hour. He’s delightful but speaks mostly Piemontese (and no English) and I’m the opposite, so it was quite an hour. We circled back to the picture of John McCain they have displayed many, many times and he would say “John McCain” and it became a universal bonding language as we sipped wines.”
No matter how far we travel, we continue to be amazed at what a small world we live in.
On the Way to Somewhere Else 