It is 4 a.m. and I am being led through the sleepy foothills of Berri, a small town in the Italian region of Piedmont, by Daniele, a licensed truffle hunter, and his petite white hound Bianca. The stars glitter in the cold, crisp air. These chilly nights are part of a delicate ecosystem in Piedmont and are, along with the bright, hot days, what makes both winemaking and white-truffle hunting so spectacular in this region. We walk through increasingly dense poplar and hazelnut trees toward a small ravine. As my American guide, Amanda, translates, Daniele explains that timing is everything. He will often return to the same location twice, even three times, a day, because a truffle can mature in just a few hours. Typical of many wild plants, truffles tend to repopulate in the same area, assuming that the truffle’s mycelium—the invisible rootlike network that spreads underground—is not disturbed. Being a good hunter is about memory, he says.
Daniele’s slow, learned approach and careful hand are hallmarks of an older way of doing things. In an age in which the word fast commonly modifies fashion and food, it is more important than ever to preserve these time-honored approaches. I am traveling across Northern Italy with Prior, an experiential travel company whose itineraries are designed to tell stories about the craftspeople who keep local heritage alive. “We want to spotlight these living cultures passed down by generations and their stewards,” says David Prior, the company’s cofounder (and a former contributing editor to this magazine). As he accompanies me from Genoa to Venice, he introduces me to artisans that specialize in various foods and crafts along the way. Prior has named this trip Fatto a Mano, or “handmade.” As with many of the company’s itineraries, it seeks to connect travelers to a place’s makers: In Italy that means winemakers, designers, bronze workers, and more. “Music, food, design,” he says. “They are the essence of culture, which makes them the essence of the place.” Introducing travelers to these increasingly endangered traditions helps raise awareness about the need to protect them.
Suddenly our conversation stops. Daniele runs toward Bianca, who is frantically digging under a tree and chewing wildly at its roots. She has been trained not to eat the truffle, no matter how delicious, but the closer she gets to one, the more feverish she becomes. Daniele leans closer, tugs Bianca away, and begins to dig with a small pickax. He stops and looks up at me, instructing me to lean down, to touch and smell the soil. Immediately I register the scent of the truffle: nutty, earthy, and intoxicating. Daniele digs patiently but with a heightened anticipation. Neither of us has to say it: What we want is to find a massive truffle, the kind that looks like a strange tumor sprung from the earth. But no. “Piccolissimo,” Daniele says, his voice tinged with disappointment. It is so small that he feeds it to Bianca as a treat—not even worth selling on the market.
Dawn is creeping across the horizon, the warm, golden light arriving like a balm. As we bid farewell to Daniele, he slips Amanda three more truffles we’ve found. We are exhausted, ready to sleep, but also ravenous. Amanda takes us to a vineyard where ripe Nebbiolo grapes are growing—harvest season is upon us—and we sit at a concrete picnic table under a large oak tree. The mist of the early morning is beginning to evaporate in the sun. Amanda fries up some fresh eggs, serving them beneath a decadent pile of white truffles on bread toasted in the pan. These delicacies can be sold for hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, but at heart they are humble food. Food of the land. And this, without a doubt, is one of the best meals of my life.
I spend the next couple of days exploring Piedmont with David. This basically means drinking wine, eating truffles, and talking about drinking wine and eating truffles. One afternoon in the town of Bra, David points to an elderly man walking along the street with quiet dignity. It is Carlo Petrini, the legendary 75-year-old founder of the organization Slow Food, which gave rise to the global slow-food movement and phenomena like Eataly, the international chain of marketplaces selling artisanal Italian provisions. A longtime food activist and writer, Carlo rose to prominence in the 1980s after protesting the opening of a McDonald’s at the Spanish Steps in Rome. In 2004 he founded the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, where David studied, which occupies a former castle worthy of Harry Potter beside ancient Roman ruins. Carlo’s philosophy—that the food we eat should be grown locally, prepared with care, and eaten with consideration—is one that David has deeply absorbed.
Motivated by this ideal, David insists that we visit Langhe, the famous Piedmont wine region, to experience the harvest of two young winemakers, Luisa Sala and Lara Rocchetti, also graduates of the University of Gastronomic Sciences. During the trip David will introduce me to some of the most prominent Barolo wine families in the region—people who own land worth millions and sell some of the priciest bottles around—but Luisa and Lara are not of this ilk. They farm just five hectares of land and sell their wine, a simple Nebbiolo, under the label Lalù (a combination of their names), for $40 in the US, even though these are essentially the same grapes that could be aged into a very expensive Barolo.
Friends of theirs, a dentist and two lawyers, have joined them this week for the harvest. They tell me they do this every year to help Luisa and Lara. A large plate of rough-cut prosciutto and freshly baked bread sits casually on a plastic table next to a large pitcher of water and an open bottle of wine. Winemaking has never seemed easy to me—harvests can be disappointing, and climate change is impacting the practice in unexpected ways. But this afternoon is pure joy. The sun is bright and the air is cool. The grapes are a dense, almost bruised purple. As they are broken down in a giant stainless-steel crusher-destemmer, they release the scent of fruit and yeast into the garage. The group’s camaraderie and intimacy are real and easy. I understand the beauty of this place, the spell that Langhe casts over everyone who sets foot here, and why Lara and Luisa insist on trying to bottle it.
The next day David and I drive across Northern Italy as the rain slants downward. By afternoon we’ve arrived in the industrial Milan neighborhood of Zona Solari. Even on a wet, overcast day, Milan is glamorous, its beauty luxurious and cosmopolitan. We duck into the entrance of Ansaldo, the workshops for the historic opera house Teatro alla Scala. Inside this 215,000-square-foot facility, 150 craftspeople oversee the set design, construction, sculpture, carpentry, mechanics, and costumes for every single production.