Il Falchetto – On the hillside there’s a vineyard he prefers to all others

The little village of Santo Stefano Belbo is nestled in the steep green hills of central Piedmont.  South of Asti and East of Alba, it’s remote and off the beaten path. In Italy, Santo Stefano Belbo is known for being home to one of the country’s most famous writers, Cesare Pavese (1908-1950). Pavese was a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator of numerous American authors including Gertrude Stein, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Herman Melville. 
 
The characters in Pavese’s poems and novels are deeply connected to the land surrounding Santo Stefano Belbo, including its many vineyards. In his poem, Atlantic Oil, Pavese sums up the life of a young mechanic: 
 
On the hillside, there’s a vineyard he prefers to all others, 
and in the end he’ll marry that vineyard and the sweet girl 
who comes with it, and he’ll go out in the sun to work, 
but now with a hoe, and his neck will turn brown, 
and he’ll drink wine pressed on fall evenings from his own grapes. 
 
Those hillside vineyards are the other thing Santo Stefano Belbo is known for, specifically the DOCG vineyards of Canelli and Nizza. Canelli is famous for its Moscato grapes while Nizza is home to the world’s most sought-after Barbera grapes. 
 
It’s likely that Cesare Pavese knew Pietro Forno, who founded the winery Il Falchetto in Santo Stefano Balbo in the 1940s. It’s unknown if Pietro was a mechanic when he was younger, but his three grandsons, Giorgio, Fabrizio, and Adriano Forno could easily be characters in a Pavese novel. 
 
Together they work the land, managing the vineyards manually, from pruning to harvest, and combine innovation with tradition to produce wines of unique personality that best express their world-famous terroir. We’ll be featuring Il Falchetto’s wines at our weekly wine tasting on Saturday. Stop by and get to know these amazing wines from Santo Stefano Belbo.