Roero: The Part of Piemonte's Wine Country, without the Crowds

Simone Kate Svampa lives and works in Piemonte, a region she describes as a place where food, wine and culture come together in a way that surprises almost everyone. The Voyage Co asked her where she would send a visitor who wanted to see the part of the region the wine labels do not advertise.

Simone lives in Piemonte and advises travellers through The Voyage Co.

A Sense of Piemonte

Simone does not begin with a famous label. She begins with the relationship between the famous part of Piemonte and the part that sits twenty minutes away with a fraction of the visitors.

Q. How would you describe Piemonte to a friend who has not been?

Piemonte is one of those regions that rewards slowness in a way that is genuinely hard to overstate. Food, wine, culture all sit on top of each other and reinforce each other. Almost everything good here takes time: the wines, the long lunches, the harvest, the truffle season, the way the light falls over the hills late in the afternoon.

Q. What do you want people to understand before they arrive?

That the Langhe and Barolo are not the whole region, and that the parts the wine map does not advertise are often the better experience. The famous towns can fill up in autumn weekends. The villages a few minutes away, in the Roero or in the smaller corners of the Langhe, are almost empty even in peak truffle season. The food is the same. The wines are excellent. The prices are a fraction.

Q. And what tends to happen to the travellers who treat Piemonte this way?

They stay longer than planned. They have a long lunch on a Sunday in a village they had not heard of. They drink three bottles of Arneis at the producer's table. They come back, sometimes the same year. Piemonte does not chase visitors, and the visitors who let the region carry them are the ones who fall hardest.

Where do locals send friends in Piemonte?

Simone's answer is across the river from the place everyone knows, and she means specific villages.

Q. Where would you send a visitor who wants to see something beyond the main wine trail?

The Roero. It is a wine-producing area on the other side of the Tanaro river from the Langhe, less well-known than the Langhe but equally beautiful, with rolling hills, vineyards, and medieval villages.

Q. What is the UNESCO designation here actually about?

Both the Langhe and the Roero are part of the UNESCO Piedmont Wine Regions World Heritage Site, which means the landscape has been formally recognised as one of the most significant vineyard territories in the world. It is not a marketing label. It is the same UNESCO designation given to the most important cultural landscapes in Europe, and the Roero sits inside it as fully as the Langhe.

Q. Which villages should travellers actually visit?

Canale, Monteu Roero, Corneliano d'Alba. These are places where local life is still visible, where you can have lunch at a restaurant that is not positioned for tourists and walk through streets that look the same as they did a hundred years ago. The wine, the Arneis in particular, is excellent and available at the source for a fraction of what it costs elsewhere.

What does Piemonte look like from a Big Bench?

Simone's 48-hour answer revolves around an unexpected art project that has quietly become one of the best ways to see the region.

Q. What would you include in a 48-hour itinerary that most guidebooks miss?

The Big Benches project. Giant colourful benches placed in scenic spots around the Langhe and Roero wine regions, offering a unique perspective on the landscape. Each bench faces a particular stretch of hills, vineyards, and villages, and the effect is partly whimsical and partly genuinely useful.

Q. Why is the perspective from a Big Bench worth seeking out?

Sitting in one gives you a fixed vantage point from which the landscape makes complete sense. The rows of vines running in every direction. The hills rolling to the horizon. The villages sitting at the tops of ridges where they have been for centuries. It also forces you to stop driving and stay still long enough to look, which is the thing most visitors find hardest to do in wine country.

Q. What goes around the bench in a good 48 hours?

A visit to a Roero winery (Arneis tasting at the producer's table, not the showroom), a long lunch at a traditional trattoria in Canale or Monteu Roero, and time in one of the smaller villages where the bakery still uses a wood oven. It is a deliberately unhurried structure. Piemonte rewards the visitor who is willing to go slowly, and 48 hours is enough if you do not try to cover everything.

When to visit Piemonte for wine and truffles

Autumn is the answer, and the reasoning is what is in season.

Q. When is Piemonte at its best?

Autumn, specifically October through December. It is the white truffle season and the period when Piemonte's food and wine culture is most vivid. The harvest is in full swing and the landscape is at its most beautiful.

Q. What exactly does white truffle season give you?

The white truffle, found in the forests around Alba and across the Langhe and the Roero, is one of the most expensive ingredients in the world. During the season, it appears on menus everywhere and the Alba truffle market draws buyers and visitors from across Europe. It is the moment when the region is most fully itself: the food, the wine releases, the village fairs, all aligned with what is in the ground.

Q. And the months you would steer travellers away from?

August. The heat is significant, many producers are closed, and a lot of the smaller restaurants are on the families' own holidays. May, June and September are excellent for the landscape and walking, without the truffle frenzy but with the vineyards in full leaf. Winter has its own quiet appeal once the truffle season ends.

What to eat in Piemonte: tajarin

One dish carries the region better than any other.

Q. What's the one dish that represents Piemontese cooking?

Tajarin. A traditional Piemontese pasta made with egg yolks and flour, which gives it a rich, golden colour and a delicate, silky texture. It is often served with a meat ragu or with truffle.

Q. How is the pasta itself different from what travellers expect?

The pasta is cut thin, almost impossibly so, and the egg yolk content is higher than almost any other pasta in Italy. In truffle season, it arrives at the table with shaved white truffle on top, and the combination is as good as food in Italy gets. Outside truffle season, a slow-cooked meat ragu is the standard pairing and equally worth ordering.

Q. And what to drink with it?

Inside the Roero: an Arneis from the producer whose vineyard you walked through, served cool. With a heavier meat ragu, a young Roero Rosso or a Nebbiolo from the area. The point of the region is that you do not need a famous label to drink very well. The bottles you order ten minutes from the vineyard will outperform the supermarket Barolo every time.

Simone's Piemonte is the one across the river from the famous names. Cross the Tanaro into the Roero, sit on a Big Bench until the landscape makes sense, eat tajarin with shaved truffle in October, drink the Arneis at the source. The Langhe is fine. The Roero is what you come back for.

Explore more Piemonte-specific insights to plan your next trip with locals.