La Morra Geography, Climate & Nature

La Morra is a ridge-top village, and everything about it follows from being higher than its neighbours.

The site

The village sits at 513 metres across a commune of 24.3 km², on the rim of the bowl that holds the Barolo vineyards. Barolo itself is at 213 metres — three hundred metres below — which is precisely why La Morra has the panorama and Barolo has the name. Standing on the terrace you are looking down on the appellation.

The amphitheatre

The shape in front of you is a genuine amphitheatre: a bowl of south- and south-west-facing slopes, with the villages on the ridges and the vineyards on everything in between. From left to right you can pick out Barolo, Castiglione Falletto and Serralunga d'Alba on their own ridges. That arrangement — settlements on the poor high ground, vines on the good slopes — is the organising logic of the whole Langhe and is visible from one spot here.

Why the soil matters

These hills are tilted marine sediments, marls and sandstones, and the composition changes over short distances and between one side of a hill and the other. La Morra's own slopes are known for a style of Barolo distinguishable from Serralunga's, from the same grape — which is why growers name individual vineyards, and why the view from the terrace is an informative one rather than merely pretty.

What it means for a visitor

The altitude is also the friction. The roads up are steep and narrow with hairpins, the village streets slope and in places are stepped, and in autumn you can be driving up out of fog into sun within two minutes. Nothing here is reachable on foot from the valley.

La Morra is at 513 metres, three hundred metres above Barolo, and that altitude changes the experience of the same weather.

What each season does

• Winter is cold, with frost and occasional snow and more wind than the valley gets. The compensation is real: on still winter mornings the fog sits in the valleys below and La Morra is in sun above it, looking down onto the top of a cloud layer with the ridges standing out of it. This is the best free spectacle in the Langhe and it happens most often from November to February.
• Spring is changeable and wet early, then excellent from May. Late frost after bud-break is the risk that matters to the growers below.
• Summer is hot, and the haze flattens the view — which matters here more than in most places, since the view is the reason to come. There is no shade on the slopes.
• Autumn brings the harvest and then the nebbia that gives Nebbiolo its name. From this height you are frequently above it. Visibility can change completely within twenty minutes.

Practical consequences

Three, all specific to being up here. The view depends on the weather, so if you have one day and a choice, come on a clear one and come early or late rather than at midday. The road up can be in fog when the village is not, and vice versa — drive slowly through the layer. And it is several degrees colder on the terrace than in the valley, with wind; bring a layer even in spring.

La Morra's 24.3 km² are predominantly planted, and the correct description of this landscape is the one UNESCO used on 22 June 2014: a cultural landscape. The Langa of Barolo was inscribed for what people made of these slopes.

What is here

• Vineyard occupies every slope with the right aspect and drainage, which is most of the commune. The vineyard floor is more variable than it looks: where growers keep grass or a cover crop between the rows, there is an invertebrate and small-mammal community; where the rows are kept bare, there is almost none. This is a management choice, and an increasing number of estates here make it deliberately, having concluded that soil biology and vine health are the same subject.
• Gully woodland survives on the steep, north-facing and awkward ground nobody could plant — oak, hornbeam and hazel, with poplar and black locust in the damp bottoms. These fragments do most of the ecological work in the commune and persist because of the gradient rather than by design.
• Field margins, tracks and hedgerow carry bramble, elder, wild rose and hazel, and function as corridors between the woodland fragments.
• The high ground of the village itself is the thinnest soil in the commune, which is why it carries houses rather than vines — and the walls, roofs and gardens of a dense hill village are their own habitat, for swifts, martins and bats above all.

Honest conclusion

This is not a nature destination and should not be presented as one. Its ecological interest is the question of what survives inside an intensively farmed landscape of outstanding cultural value — a real question, increasingly taken seriously here. For unfarmed ground, the Alta Langa to the south is where the vines give out and woodland takes over.

Ridge-top village, planted slopes: the wildlife here lives in the gullies and the margins, and the best of it is in the air.

In the air, which is the La Morra speciality

Being on a ridge at 513 metres above a bowl of open slopes means you are level with the birds that use the updraught. Common buzzard and kestrel hunt the amphitheatre below the terrace and are often at eye level rather than overhead, which is an unusual and genuinely good piece of birdwatching available from a public viewpoint with a railing. Through the summer, swifts, swallows and house martins work the air between the village walls and the vines, nesting on the buildings.

Mammals

Wild boar are abundant in these hills and are the animal you may actually meet, at dusk where woodland meets vineyard. They damage vines, are a real agricultural problem, and are hunted accordingly; they are not dangerous if left alone, with a sow and young the exception. Roe deer use the gully woodland, and red fox, badger and stone marten work the margins. European hare is on the open ground between rows at first light.

In the gullies

Jay, green woodpecker and great spotted woodpecker keep to the oak remnants; hoopoe and golden oriole arrive in spring and are heard more often than seen. Bats use the village roofs and hunt the vineyard edges after dark.

Where to look

The terrace at first light, for the raptors below you — this is the one place in the Langhe where the view and the birdwatching are the same activity. Otherwise the woodland edge and the Sentiero del Barolo early in the day. Not the rows: private, a crop, and quiet.