The best small wine towns within 90 minutes of Torino
The land begins to fold as soon as you leave the Torino plain, and by the time the road reaches the Langhe, the Roero and the Monferrato it is all ridge and vineyard, rows running along the contour like stitching. Houses here are brick and sandstone, the colour of wet earth in autumn, and the towers on the hilltops were built to watch for people arriving rather than to be photographed. The wine is Nebbiolo on the high south-facing slopes, Dolcetto lower down, Barbera almost everywhere, Moscato where the hills soften towards the Belbo valley. October is the month everything smells of fermentation and white truffle, though May, when the vines are green and the restaurants have tables outside, is the easier season to get a room.
The default plan is Alba, and it is a good town: hazelnut shops, the truffle fair, wine bars that pour verticals by the glass, an old centre you can cross in a quarter of an hour. That is also why the autumn weekends there involve queues for lunch and a car park somewhere out by the ring road. Asti and Bra collect a similar crowd for their own food events. None of it is a scam, it is simply where the coaches stop.
The vineyards do not end at the edge of those towns. They keep going up the ridges to villages with a single piazza, a co-operative cellar and a family restaurant that serves tajarin and brasato without a printed English menu, and further still to the Aosta valley, where terraced vines cling above the Dora Baltea. These are the smaller places, closer to Torino than most people assume, and fewer people go.
Of the 34 communes we have mapped in within 90 minutes of Torino, 13 qualify as wine towns: each belongs to the national association of wine towns. This list is the small ones, 10 in all, ordered smallest first. The smallest, Serralunga d'Alba, has 527 residents.
Elsewhere in the catalogue: The 10 best hidden wine towns that eat well within 90 minutes of Torino and The best wine towns in the province of Cuneo.
Serralunga d'Alba
Why visit Serralunga d'Alba
Serralunga d'Alba sits fifty-five kilometers southeast of Torino, in the centre of the Barolo DOCG, on a ridge so long and thin that the village is built as a single file along it. The Falletti family of Asti, merchants and bankers rather than warriors, acquired the territory and rebuilt the castle between 1340 and 1357 under Pietrino and his son Goffredo II, demolishing an earlier tower to put up the donjon in its place.
The choice of plan mattered: a French-style tower was unusual for Italy, and its narrowness was a statement of control over the productive land below rather than a defensive necessity. The layout of the borgo follows from this.
Houses run in a line along the crinale from the castle down to the parish church, so the two structures anchor the settlement at either end, administrative power at one point, religious life at the other, with the village strung between them. The vineyards that surround the ridge on all sides are what the castle was built to oversee, and what later brought international recognition to the same slopes.
A defensive tower repurposed as a counting house, a village laid out to serve it, and vineyards inscribed for the same landscape they were always part of: the place reads as one continuous arrangement rather than three separate attractions.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Serralunga d'Alba
- Castello di Serralunga d'Alba. Vertical and slim above the ridge, the donjon plan reads at a distance rather than up close, a design meant for administrative control of the land rather than for defense.
- Borgo lungo il crinale. Linear village of stone houses along the narrow Langhe ridge, with a single main street running from the castle to the parish church.
- Parrocchiale di San Sebastiano. Parish church on the ridge below the castle, with a baroque interior on a simpler medieval plan, the religious centre of the borgo.
How to get to Serralunga d'Alba
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 64 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June is the green window across the Barolo ridges: vines in leaf, mild evenings, the castle terrace open onto a clear line of cru. July and August touch the mid-thirties on the south-facing slopes; the borgo thins between two and five and the cantine close in the afternoon heat. September and October are the Nebbiolo harvest, when Serralunga's narrow main street fills with tractors and pickers and the wineries open their doors.
Verduno
Why visit Verduno
Verduno sits fifty kilometers south of Torino on a Langhe ridge above the Tanaro, its vineyards the only ones among the eleven Barolo communes to lean partly toward the river plain rather than folding back into the hills. That position, facing the water and the Alps beyond it, sets the village apart from the rest of the DOCG even before the wine is considered.
The other thing that sets it apart is Pelaverga Piccolo, a native black grape cultivated commercially in only three Langhe communes: Verduno, La Morra and Roddi. It yields a light ruby red with strawberry, rose and a distinct white-pepper finish, and the first single-variety Pelaverga vineyard on these slopes was planted in 1972.
Between the castle on the ridge and the vine on the plain-facing slope, Verduno holds two things most of its neighbors do not: a wine that is Barolo's own, structurally, and a wine that belongs to almost nowhere else.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Verduno
- Castello di Verduno. The castle stands on the Langhe ridge and passed to the Burlotto family in 1909, who still work it as a winery producing Barolo and Pelaverga.
- Centro storico. Small hilltop village arranged around the castle and the parish church, with views across the Tanaro and the northern Barolo vineyards.
- Vigneti di Pelaverga. Indigenous Pelaverga Piccolo plantings on the Verduno slopes, including the first single-variety Pelaverga vineyard planted in 1972.
How to get to Verduno
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 60 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June is the green window in the Langhe, hillsides striped between Nebbiolo and Pelaverga vines, mild evenings on the Verduno ridge. September and October are the harvest months: Pelaverga first, Nebbiolo last, with the surrounding cantine open for tastings and walking through the rows possible without crowds. July and August touch the low thirties on the hills; the centro storico thins after lunch and the cellar tastings move under stone vaults to stay cool.
Barolo
Why visit Barolo
Barolo sits at 301 meters on a Langhe hilltop fifty-five kilometers south of Torino, in the heart of the DOCG appellation that takes its name. The Castello Falletti rises from the centre of the village; its oldest walls date to the eleventh century, when Berengar I of Italy granted local lords permission to fortify against Hungarian and Saracen raids.
The Falletti family took the castle in 1325 and held it for five centuries. In the 1830s the Marchesi Tancredi and Giulia Falletti, working with Camillo Benso di Cavour and the French enologist Louis Oudart, pushed the Nebbiolo of these hills toward dry, age-worthy production for the first time.
The village bought the castle by public subscription in 1970. Since 2010 it has housed the WiMu, a wine museum laid out by François Confino.
The Cannubi cru, on the next hill, is the oldest officially named vineyard parcel in the appellation, recognised on a 1752 wine label. Barolo is one of eleven communes inside the DOCG zone and part of the UNESCO Langhe-Roero and Monferrato landscape inscribed in 2014.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Barolo
- Castello Falletti. 11th-century castle expanded by the Falletti from 1325, bought by the comune in 1970, now home to the WiMu wine museum since 2010.
- WiMu - Museo del Vino. Wine museum inside the castle, designed by François Confino, with the Regional Wine Library of Barolo in the cellars.
- Vigneto Cannubi. Historic cru on the hill east of the village, recognised on a 1752 wine label as the oldest officially named parcel in the Barolo appellation.
How to get to Barolo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 63 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September into October are the best months in the Langhe. The hills are green or gold depending on the season, the cantine run a full visiting calendar, and the Castello Falletti stays cool enough for the long museum walk. July and August are hot on the south-facing slopes and the village empties between two and five.
Cocconato
Why visit Cocconato
Cocconato sits thirty kilometers east of Torino, on a ridge whose south-facing slope catches enough sun to keep olives, palms and mimosas alive this far north, the reason locals call the area the Riviera del Monferrato. From the tenth century the ridge was held by the Radicati counts, a Manfredian family, as an imperial fief for four hundred years, until 1586: the centro storico that survives is their seat, not a later reconstruction.
The town's two anchors sit close together but answer to different authorities. The civic palace, built in the fifteenth century, faces the seventeenth-century parish church of Santa Maria della Consolazione across the upper piazza, government and religion holding opposite ends of the same small square.
Beyond the built center, the ridge opens onto a belvedere looking south across vineyards toward the Alta Langa and, on clear days, the Monviso massif. Since 1970 the six frazioni of Airali, Brina, Colline Magre, San Carlo, Torre and Tuffo have raced their donkeys in the Palio degli Asini, a modern rivalry laid over an old administrative one.
Cocconato is the only commune in the province of Asti to hold the Bandiera Arancione, a fitting distinction for a ridge that has been organizing the same handful of parts, fief, palace, church, frazioni, for centuries.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Cocconato
- Palazzo Comunale. Pointed-arch porticoes and terracotta-framed windows on the Late Gothic facade, still the building the ridge town organizes itself around.
- Chiesa di Santa Maria della Consolazione. Seventeenth-century parish church anchoring the upper piazza, the religious counterweight to the medieval civic palace below it.
- Centro storico. Medieval ridge town that was the seat of the Radicati counts from the tenth century until 1586, well preserved on the south-facing slope.
How to get to Cocconato
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 57 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the months that earn Cocconato its Riviera nickname: dry warm days on the ridge, vineyards in green or gold, and the palms in the lower gardens visibly out of season. July and August are warm and busy, with Cocco Wine at the end of summer drawing crowds into the centro storico. November through March is the quiet half of the year.
Donnas
Why visit Donnas
Donnas sits at 322 metres at the south-eastern mouth of the Aosta Valley, where the Dora Baltea slows and the cliffs close in on the old road. The Romans built the Via delle Gallie through here in the first century BC to connect the Po Valley with Gaul, and a 221-metre stretch of paved road, cut for more than 200 metres directly into the bedrock, still survives with cart-wheel ruts in the stone, a single Roman arch, and a milestone marking the thirty-sixth mile from Augusta Praetoria.
The medieval village rebuilt itself against the cliff face after the 1176 landslide that destroyed the older settlement of Treby a kilometre west. Wine has been documented here since 1200.
In 1971, Donnas became the first Valdostan wine to earn DOC status: 85 to 90 per cent Nebbiolo, grown on terraced slopes along the Dora, vinified at the Caves Coopératives de Donnas above the historic centre.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Donnas
- Strada Romana delle Gallie. First-century BC Roman road carved directly into the bedrock for more than 200 metres, with surviving cart-wheel ruts, a single arch and a milestone.
- Arco Romano e Miliario. Roman arch cut from the rock and a milestone indicating the XXXVI mile from Augusta Praetoria, anchoring the surviving stretch of the Via delle Gallie.
- Borgo storico di Donnas. Medieval village rebuilt against the cliff face after the 1176 landslide that destroyed nearby Treby, with stone houses along the old consular road.
How to get to Donnas
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 85 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June and September through October are the working months in Donnas. The vineyards bud and leaf out in spring, the harvest runs through September into early October, and the lower-valley light is at its clearest. The Via delle Gallie is walkable year-round but most pleasant in shoulder seasons, when the rock-cut road is dry and the sun reaches the cliff face.
La Morra
Why visit La Morra
La Morra sits at 513 meters on the western edge of the Barolo zone, fifty kilometers southeast of Torino, the highest of the eleven communes and the one with the widest view over the rest of them. The village itself gathers around the square and the tower; the working part of it, the crus, spreads downhill and outward, Brunate and Cerequio among them, with the Cantina Comunale pouring producers from across that spread under one roof in the old Marchesi di Barolo cellars.
A kilometer outside the centro, below the village, the former abbey sits in the Marcenasco cru with its wine museum, and Renato Ratti bought his first parcel near it in 1965, drawing the first cru map of the zone a decade later. The village is compact and fixed in place; the vineyards around it are what the whole zone is measured against.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in La Morra
- Belvedere di Piazza Castello. The highest point of the village, with the 18th-century bell tower rising above the terrace.
- Cappella del Barolo (Cappella delle Brunate). A small vineyard chapel among the vine rows of the cru, its two faces given over entirely to the artists' repainting, interior and exterior alike.
- Cantina Comunale di La Morra. Municipal wine cellar founded 1973 in the 18th-century palace of the Marchesi di Barolo, pouring 70+ local producers.
How to get to La Morra
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 59 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June bring green vines, mild evenings and the long views the Belvedere is built for. September and October are harvest, when the cellars open and the hills turn copper. July and August push past thirty degrees and the centro thins between two and six, though the elevation keeps nights cooler than Alba.
Guarene
Why visit Guarene
Guarene sits at 360 meters on the left bank of the Tanaro, the last hill of the Roero before the river crosses to Alba and the Langhe. The Roero family, powerful Asti bankers, took the village in 1379 and held it until the line ended with Count Alessandro in 1899.
Count Carlo Giacinto Roero rebuilt the medieval fortress between 1726 and his death, turning it into a baroque summer residence; his sons completed the work and hosted the king and queen of Sardinia here in 1773. The castle is now a Relais & Châteaux hotel with a small museum.
On the slope below the village, the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo opened Palazzo Re Rebaudengo in 1997 as its first contemporary art space; the foundation added an open-air sculpture park in 2019 with works by Carsten Höller, Marguerite Humeau, and Paul Kneale set among pear orchards and Nebbiolo rows. The hill carries four institutional signals at once, the highest density of any Roero commune.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Guarene
- Castello di Guarene. Eighteenth-century baroque castle rebuilt 1726 by Count Carlo Giacinto Roero from a medieval fortress, now a Relais & Châteaux hotel.
- Palazzo Re Rebaudengo. Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo's first contemporary art space, opened 1997 in an eighteenth-century palazzo in the village.
- Parco d'arte Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Open-air sculpture park opened 2019 with works by Carsten Höller, Marguerite Humeau, and Paul Kneale among Nebbiolo rows and pear orchards.
How to get to Guarene
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 62 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through October is the season. May and June green the Roero hills and the castle gardens open. September and October bring the harvest and Arneis bottling; the Tartufo Bianco d'Alba fair in October fills the surrounding villages.
Castagnole delle Lanze
Why visit Castagnole delle Lanze
Fifteen kilometers south of Asti, Castagnole delle Lanze lies in the UNESCO Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont, on ground once crossed by a Roman road branching off the Via Aemilia between Acqui and Pollenzo. In the Middle Ages the lands belonged to the counts of Loreto, with Manfredo I the count most tied to the community; their castle, probably destroyed in 1255 when the contado fell, has not survived, and from the thirteenth century the town passed under the Comune of Asti.
The main square and Piazza Balbo hold the two churches that anchor the lower town, while the Parco della Rimembranza occupies the highest ground of the village, looking over the Tinella and Tanaro valleys. What remains is a settlement built in layers: a Roman route, a lost medieval castle, a pair of Baroque churches, and a nineteenth-century tower, each belonging to a different century and none of them replacing the one before it.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Castagnole delle Lanze
- Chiesa di San Pietro in Vincoli. Parish church of 1681 on the main square, Ligurian-Piedmontese Baroque with a twin-bell-tower façade.
- Chiesa dei Battuti Bianchi. Confraternity church of 1668 in Piazza Balbo, deconsecrated and now used as a space for cultural events.
- Torre di San Robert. Built by Count Paolo Ballada di San Robert, the tower stands at the top of the Parco della Rimembranza and still functions as a lookout over the surrounding hills.
How to get to Castagnole delle Lanze
There is a railway station in the town, so you can arrive without a car and never need one while you are here. Torino is roughly 72 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June brings the vines into leaf and the Tinella valley into clear light, with the Torre di San Robert opening on weekends. September and October are harvest, the high season for the Langhe-Monferrato hills and the time the Adotta un filare initiative runs its tastings. July and August get hot on the south-facing slopes; mornings in the Parco della Rimembranza and evenings on the main piazza are the cooler hours.
Santo Stefano Belbo
Why visit Santo Stefano Belbo
Santo Stefano Belbo sits at 175 meters on the Belbo, sixty kilometers southeast of Torino, on the seam between the Langhe and the Asti hills. Cesare Pavese was born here on 9 September 1908; his father came from the village and the family returned every summer.
The hills around the town gave him the setting for La luna e i falò and most of his late prose; his birthplace house and the Fondazione Cesare Pavese in the centre keep the manuscripts, photographs and the schoolroom of his early years. The commune is the largest producer of Moscato d'Asti and Asti Spumante in the DOCG, with close to 80,000 hectoliters of wine made each year, 93 percent of it Moscato.
A ruined medieval tower above the town once controlled the Belbo valley road. The recognitions stack up around what the commune actually does: Spighe Verdi for sustainable rural management, Città del Vino for Moscato, Città della Nocciola for the Tonda Gentile hazelnut of the surrounding slopes.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Santo Stefano Belbo
- Casa natale e Fondazione Cesare Pavese. Birthplace of the writer (1908) and the foundation in the centre, with manuscripts, photographs and audiovisual material on his life and work.
- Torre medievale. Ruined medieval watchtower above the village, the surviving fragment of the fortified core that once controlled the Belbo valley road.
- Convento dei Santi Giacomo e Cristoforo. Benedictine convent and church on the hill above town, traditionally said to stand on the foundations of a Roman temple of Jupiter.
How to get to Santo Stefano Belbo
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 81 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June is the green window between the Langhe and the Asti hills, with the Moscato vines coming into leaf and the Belbo valley cool in the mornings. July and August touch the mid-thirties; the village empties between two and five, and the cantine open for tastings only by appointment. September brings the Moscato harvest, the noisiest and most photographed month, with grape lorries on every road. Mercatino senza tempo falls in August.
Dogliani
Why visit Dogliani
Dogliani sits on the western edge of the Langhe, sixty kilometers southeast of Torino. The town is built in two parts: the Borgo on the valley floor along the Rea stream, and the hill settlement above it that still keeps its medieval shape.
The land around both is planted in Dolcetto, and the vineyards climb from the stream up toward the ridges where the wine cellars sit. The lower town and the upper town read as two different eras occupying one place: the Borgo organized around its parish church and the stream, the hill settlement holding onto a keep and stone houses from an older layout.
A local architect worked mostly in the nineteenth century and left his mark across both parts of town, so the eclectic civic and religious buildings he designed sit alongside the medieval stonework rather than replacing it. A president born here founded a wine estate in the hills above town, and the cellars he started are still producing today, linking the town's political history back to the same slopes that give it its wine.
What holds Dogliani together is that its wine, its architecture and its most famous native son are not separate stories but the same hillside seen from different angles: a small commune whose vines, buildings and history all trace back to the ground between the stream and the hill.
The comune belongs to the national association of wine-producing towns.
What to see in Dogliani
- Castello di Dogliani. Medieval upper town at 300 meters that gives Dogliani its two-tier silhouette, with stone houses and a surviving castle keep.
- Schellino buildings. Eighteen nineteenth-century structures by Giovanni Battista Schellino, including the cemetery chapel and several neo-Gothic civic buildings.
- Poderi Luigi Einaudi. Cellars founded in 1897 by the second President of the Italian Republic, still producing Dogliani DOCG in the hills above town.
How to get to Dogliani
There is no station we could confirm here, so this one means driving. Torino is roughly 70 minutes away by road.
Our tip
April through June is leaf and flower in the Dolcetto vineyards, mild on the Rea valley floor and slightly cooler in the Castello on the hill. September is harvest month for Dolcetto, the earliest of the three classic Langhe reds; October brings Nebbiolo and the Fiera del Vino. July and August reach the low thirties on the valley floor.
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