Il Castello di Tagliolo

Last week, Mark and I joined a group from our community to head out to a castle. No, a winery. No, a castle.

Actually, both. The Castello di Tagliolo has been in the Pinelli Gentile family since 1498. The current Marquis Pinelli Gentile (of course they're a titled family!) still lives on the grounds of the castle and, with his son, has turned the vineyards and cellars into an off-the-beaten-path tourist destination. They have a guest house on grounds (we didn't stay, it's only about an hour from Milan by car) but the bulk of their guests are Scandinavian...for some odd reason.

The Castle of Taliolo is surrounded by a medieval village and overlooks the vineyard of the Alto Monferrato in Piedmonte, Italy. This is one of the traditional areas of production for Dolcetto and Barbera grapes. Side note: I became hooked on Barbera wines during my more-than-occasional trips to a Como wine bar. Yummy.

So the Marquis' son (the heir to the Castle) took our group through the grounds. Starting from the outside, we saw the original walls and layout of the castle. While this was all beautiful and historical, the really spectacular part came when he took us around the back. A Swedish couple sipping wine on lawn chairs (note to self: come back for a weekend) let us interrupt their romantic sunset to take a look at the following view. You don't have to go all the way to Tuscany to see this stuff, folks.


Then, we headed inside and downstairs to take a look at the cellars. They use aged wooden barrels for some of the wines but explained the whole process of how they have to sterilize it each year (there's a tiny door that somebody actually climbs inside to clean!) They do everything from the pressing of the grapes (big machines) to the bottling of the wine inside the walls of the Castle. The vinification takes place in gigantic metal containers before the the oak vats. Then, bottling. They even explained how they get sparkling wine to "sparkle" by hanging it upside down and doing...something I can't remember...with the sediments.


Following our cellar tour, we headed back upstairs. All the way up this time to the castle's tower. After a couple of hundred of tiny steps and tiny doorways (any wonder why I re-slipped my disc the next day?), we arrived in the tower to catch this view of the medieval - and still functioning - town to the west:

And this view of the mountains and vineyards to the east:


You can't really see it in the picture but we got a pretty clear view of the snow-capped Alps from where we were standing.

After lingering upstairs to catch the sunset, we all hurried to the tasting room for the REAL reason we were there - the vino!


With some delicious local cheese to accompany the Castle's wine, our group made some major purchases after the tasting. I was particularly fond of the Riserva del Marchese Rose, the rose sparkling wine while Mark enjoyed La Castagnola, a flavorful red made of the Dolcetto grape. We ended up buying a little bit of everything (the prices were ridiculously cheap and wines amazingly good). The biggest surprise of the night was how much we enjoyed the dessert wine that we sampled. Neither of us are really into sweet wines or ports but the Castello's L'In...chino is a delicious red sweet that smells of herbs but leaves an aftertaste of cinnamon. It sounds weird but it was really amazing. Not only were the wines fairly inexpensive but the tasting and tour were only about 20 euro and I didn't even take photos of all the food they served us or describe the other wines we drank!


The next, and final, stop for our group was a local restaurant in town. For about 30 euro, we had a traditional five-course (which ended up being seven courses since they just kept giving us food) Northern Italian meal with as much wine as we could consume. For us Milanese, it was heaven. It's honestly difficult to get a decent meal (i.e. shared appetizer and pasta) for 30 euro, let alone a great and HUGE meal with wine. The only course I finished was this first one:


Above, we have a tuna carpaccio (near left) with shaved truffles on top. The truffles are in season and local so it was a real treat. On the near right, a beef carpaccio with a sauce I can't remember. I guess I should've written this blog entry sooner! It was delicious. There in the back is a pork pate with fresh pesto. After this course was artichoke in puff pastry with a cheese sauce, homemade gnocchi in a creamy local cheese sauce (yummy but too rich for more that just a couple bites) and a slow roasted beef that pretty much fell apart (in a good way). The dessert was chocolate but, by then, I was lucky to get a taste. Did I mention that a charcuterie platter of salame and prociutto was served first?

We were supposed to return by 10.30pm, however, the wonderful tour and gourmet dinner dragged out the evening until midnight and our whole group rode back on the bus in sleepy silence.