At the urging our hotel sommelier, we decided to drive the 40 minutes to Travaglini Gattinara, a five generation winery that grows Nebbiolo grapes. About three miles out, we turned off the Autostrada (the Interstate) and headed through a pretty ugly section of industrial and big box stores.
I quipped to Carol, "well, you can tell we're in wine country." Then we started rolling through a couple of smaller towns, over the Sesia River, and into the medieval village of Gattinara. We turned off the main road and it got small town/rural very quickly.
The GPS took us to a dirt road, past the winery, before we realized it wasn't behind the gated fence that Waze insisted it was. It was a private house, with a dog happy to see us. And by "happy to see us," I don't mean in that friendly, tail-wagging way most dogs have, but more in the "I'm going to tear you apart limb by limb and have you watch me eat you part by part as your brain loses consciousness" way that a few dogs have.
(Editor: Whelp, that got dark quickly. Like pitch black 2am moonless night dark. Blogger: Huh? Whoa, sorry, I think I wasn't fully conscious whilst writing that last paragraph. Wonder what I said. ((Reads post:)) Whoa. Sorry about that. Nothing see here. Time to gently move along!)
Anyhoo, as we pulled up to the actual winery, a non-descript, albeit largish, brick building, I was worried this was going to be a wasted trip, or, if not, at least a letdown from what we were promised. We were met by a young woman who was to be our tour & tasting guide for the winery.
We had a bottle of their Reserva wine the night before with dinner at Lo Stronello, and took an instant liking to it, so this seemed to be a bummer.
When she said, "we'll start with a video," I was sighing inwardly. Carol looked at me, and in that loving way spouses have, rolled her eyes. Great, it's 10:30 in the morning, and we're a long way from anywhere else worth being!
Then the video started. It was actually pretty interesting, as it showed how they cleared and created a new field for more vineyards. So that was of interest. And, we also realized that tour consisted of us, and our guide, and that was it. No other people there. That was something to like.
And then it all got very cool. She took us into the bottling/labeling room. First, we watch an older woman from the village putting labels and ribbons on the magnums. She had row after row of magnums set up in front of her.
She's done a lot of labeling by 10:45 am.
Very tempting to try to sneak one out.
A magnum!
Then she walked us over to the bottling machine, and we watched the workers feed the empty bottles into the assembly line, where they were spiffily cleaned by machine, filled, and corked. The daughter of the owner, Cinzia Travaglini and her husband, the winemaker, was working the bottling.
The bottles then went through a back and forth process to shake the cork tight. Then the foil was deftly put on by the same machine, and finally out the other end where another worker stacked them in boxes. It reminded us a lot of watching the bottling production line at Bold Rock, a cidery in Nelson County, Virginia.
The old bottle mold.
The bottles being cleaned, filled, and corked.
Of course Carol is happy, she's standing
next to a LOT of great wine!
The bottles are constantly moving on
this part, to make sure the cork has
a nice, tight fit.
And last in the process, the foil gets
put onto the cork/top of the bottle.
The tour could have ended right there and we would have been happy with it. But wait, there's more. Just before we went into the vat room, the owner glided by and introduced herself to us. I remember at one wine dinner in the Del Ray area of Alexandria, the owner answered my quizzical query (Editor: Nice alliteration! Blogger: Quite!) as to why he was there by saying, "You sell one bottle at a time." I have to believe it wasn't a lucky chance that she ran into us, but we had a nice chat and we were charmed that the owner took time to meet us.
Next we went into the vat room, where our guide (she never us gave her name, I guess she didn't care about the fame that comes with being named by name in this widely read blog.)
(Editor: Named by name? Blogger: Forget it, I'm on a roll.)
Everyone should have a tower
of wine in their house, no?
They have a lot more vats than
this in the tank room. And
every time the winery buys
another one, the vat maker
says, "Tanks a lot!"
(Editor: Are you drinking copious amounts of wine right now? Blogger: Believe it or not, no actually. Although that's not a bad idea.)
So that was all pretty cool, and then we went down to the barrel rooms. There are two -- one with huge barrels aging the wine for a longer period of time, and one with regular French oak barrels for a shorter aging period. I will let the pictures tell the story:
I will let you figure out which are the
smaller barrels and which are the larger ones.
Then she took us into the very modern family wine library, where they are storing bottles from the many different years. The winery was started in the 1920s. Wine had been made in the town since the Romans, but the focus had always been on quantity and not quality.
Travaglini started focusing on quality in the 1958, when Giancarlo Travaglini inherited the winery after his father passed away. It's also the year of an interesting innovation that helps the winery stand out from others. If we are socializing and I pull out a bottle of Travaglini Gattinara to share with you, I will tell you of that innovation, but I'm not telling that story here.
The owner and her husband are the fourth generation of the family to be making wines, and are coming up on the winery's 100th anniversary.
After that, we went back upstairs, this time to the wine tasting room. First, our guide showed us a vineyard map of the area. Travaglini owns 57% of the vineyard space in greater Gattinara, and is constantly looking to expand, buying up little plots here and there to expand.
Our guide then brought out a charcuterie plate to have with the wine (mercifully smaller than the one from the hotel wine tasting on Monday night). We tasted three different wines, all of which we enjoyed. They sold for 6.70 Euros, 11.90 Euros, and 20 Euros each. Each were much better quality than similarly price wine. We could have tasted six wines, but at noon with a drive still ahead of me, I thought an intelligent decision was better than a stupid choice, so we went with the three. Which was plenty.
The winery won't do a direct ship to the US, but she gave us info on different ways to order their wines in the US, so I fully plan to. As we were saying our fond farewells (we really liked our guide, and the wine made us fonder of her!), the owner stopped by again to chat, and forever earned my eternal appreciation by giving us a branded waiter key double-hinged wine opener. It came in handy in Amsterdam and was not confiscated going through airport security (we did carry-on only) in Milan and Amsterdam.
My only disappointment was that we didn't get to see the vineyards, but I had a plan to drive the dirt roads past the vineyards. Except it all turned out cooler than that.
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