Piedmont in late March

[Alexander Chung]

My soon-to-be wife and I are honeymooning through Piedmont for 3 nights in late March. Could y'all help us fill out our itinerary? We'll be staying at the Castello di Razzano in Alfiano Natta and will have a car to explore.

Monday March 30th:

We're grabbing our car in Milan and having dinner in the city at Aimo e Nadia.

Tuesday:

Don't have any set plans but would like to spend the day wine tasting. Any lunch recommendations in the wine region in Asti?

Dinner: Il Cascinale w/ a guest chef from Sicily.

Wednesday:

We're gonna head up to Combal Zero for a long lunch. Will spend the day walking the property.

We're looking for a memorable local spot near the hotel.

Much appreciated!

Alex

[Sampaguita]

Alex, welcome to Piedmont for your honeymoon!

It sounds like as if you have your (top-end) restaurants already mapped out.

But when you ask about wine-country, in fact the central wine area of Piedmont has 4 separate wine areas, Monferrato Basso (where you will be staying), Monferrato Alto, Langhe and Roero, and you will not be able to cover them in one day. If it were me I would stick to your local area and take it in, good wineries all over the place, I like especially Castagnole Monferrato, the Ruche wine area, Cocconato (Bava or Dezzani) and Castlenouvo Don Bosco, the Fresia wine region. so many wonderful little osterie all over the place, I can think of Cascina Rosengana in Cocconato, Merlo Ghiotone in C.Monferrato and Swiss Chef's favourite Da Maria in nearby Zanco. If you eat at the first one you won't want big dinner that's for sure.

Cascinale is down by Asti, so you could vary your route and go to either Barolo or Barbaresco and do dinner on the way home - long day. Its hard to go wrong with any small osterie in the area, except one which I blasted last year as a disgrace to Piedmont.

But why not ask your hosts to set up an itinerary for you?

Combal Zero is over by Turin, I would spend the day in that fascinating and overlooked by tourists city.

Enjoy!