Alba Geography, Climate & Nature

Alba sits in a river valley with hills on both sides, and the two sides are different enough to have produced two different wines.

The site

The town is at 172 metres on the Tanaro, across a municipality of 53.59 km². It is a valley-floor town, which is unusual in this rollout and is the whole reason it became the market: everything around it is up a hill, and Alba is where the roads meet.

The two sides of the river

The Langhe are the hills to the south and east of the Tanaro, running across the provinces of Cuneo and Asti. They are steep, marl and sandstone, and they carry the Nebbiolo. South-west of Alba is the Langa of Barolo; north-east, across the river valley, are the Hills of Barbaresco. Further south the land climbs into the Alta Langa, higher and colder, where the vines give out and hazelnuts and woodland take over.

North of the Tanaro is the Roero, sandier and less famous, and the third name in the UNESCO inscription.

Why the geology is the point

The Langhe hills are a sequence of marine sediments tilted and cut into by rivers, which is why a single slope can change character over two hundred metres and why the growers talk about individual vineyards the way Burgundians do. The same grape, Nebbiolo, planted on the two sides of Alba, produces Barolo on one and Barbaresco on the other. That is a geographical fact before it is a commercial one.

What it means for a visitor

Alba is flat and the hills are not. Everything worth seeing is a drive of fifteen to thirty minutes up a ridge road, and the roads follow the ridges rather than the valleys — which is slow, scenic and occasionally disorienting, because you can see your destination for twenty minutes before reaching it.

Alba is at 172 metres on a valley floor with hills rising on both sides, and that geometry matters more than the latitude. Cold air settles in the valley; the vineyards are deliberately on the slopes above it.

What each season does

• Winter is cold, grey and often damp, with frost in the valley and occasional snow. The vines are pruned and the cellars are quiet. It is the cheapest and emptiest time to come and it has its own appeal, but several restaurants close.
• Spring is changeable and wet early, then excellent from May. The hills turn green in a few weeks and the light on the ridges in late May and June is the best of the year.
• Summer is hot and often hazy, with thunderstorms over the hills. Not the obvious season: the Langhe have no water and little shade, and the growers are busy.
• Autumn is the point. Harvest in September, then the fog — the valley mist that gives Nebbiolo its name, from nebbia. The truffle fair runs through it from 10 October to 6 December, and the combination of fog, bare vines and the market is what people come for.

Why the fog is not a complaint

It is worth being clear that the famous Langhe autumn is often a cold, wet, grey one, and that this is the condition the region is most beautiful in rather than an exception to it. Pack for damp and low cloud in October and November, and plan indoor time — cellars, museums, long lunches. Those are the right activities for the weather, which is presumably how the local culture came to be built around them.

Alba sits across 53.59 km² of valley floor and hill slope, and the honest description of the Langhe is that this is a cultivated landscape — which is exactly what UNESCO inscribed on 22 June 2014. The Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont is listed as a cultural landscape, not a natural one.

What that means on the ground

The hills south and east of the Tanaro are vineyard, hazelnut orchard and woodland fragment, in that order. Monoculture on the best-exposed slopes is the rule, with the vines planted on the marl and sandstone of the ridges where the drainage is right. Between and below them:

• Woodland remnants hold on in the gullies and on the steep north-facing slopes too awkward to plant — oak, hornbeam, chestnut and, in the damp bottoms, black locust and poplar. These fragments are the main habitat reservoir in the Langhe, and they persist because of the gradient rather than by design.
• Hazelnut groves are the second crop and a real habitat in their own right: a managed shrub layer with a leaf litter beneath it, less bare than a vineyard floor.
• The Tanaro corridor through Alba is a riparian strip of willow and poplar, fragmentary where the town and its industry sit on the river, but continuous enough upstream and down to function as a movement route.
• The Alta Langa, higher and colder to the south, is where the vines give out and woodland and pasture take over. This is the nearest unfarmed ground to Alba and the right direction to walk for anything other than vines.

The truffle is the interesting case

The white truffle cannot be cultivated. It grows in association with the roots of specific trees in specific soils, which means the entire truffle economy — the fair in its 96th edition, the market, the price — depends on habitat nobody planted and nobody can replace. That is an unusually direct link between a wild organism and a town's livelihood, and it is why woodland conservation in these hills is an economic argument as well as an ecological one.

The Langhe are farmed hills, so the wildlife here is edge-and-fragment wildlife: what lives in the woodland strips, the gullies and the hazelnut groves between the vineyards.

Mammals

Wild boar are abundant across these hills and are the animal a visitor is most likely to meet, usually at dusk on a track between woodland and vineyard. They are a serious agricultural problem here — they damage vines and are hunted accordingly — and they are not dangerous if left alone, with a sow and young the exception. Roe deer use the woodland fragments, and red fox, badger and stone marten are the regular carnivores of this landscape. European hare works the open ground between rows.

The dogs, which are the point

No account of wildlife in these hills is complete without the working animals. The truffle dog — generally a Lagotto Romagnolo or a mongrel trained for it — is the instrument of the entire truffle economy, and the trifulau work at night to keep their ground secret. Pigs are no longer used; dogs can be trained not to eat the find.

Birds

Vineyard country is better for birds than it looks, because the woodland fragments and the hazelnut groves provide what the rows do not. Common buzzard and kestrel hunt the open slopes; hoopoe and golden oriole arrive in spring and are easier to hear than see; jay and green woodpecker work the oak remnants. The Tanaro corridor through Alba brings herons and kingfishers into the edge of the town.

Where to look

Not in the vineyards — they are private, a crop, and quiet. The productive ground is the woodland edge at first light, the gullies between the planted slopes, and the higher, less-planted country of the Alta Langa to the south. The marked paths and farm tracks that cross these hills are the right way in; the rows are not.