Val Trebbia, a land of wine
It is our home and we know it very well: from the top of Monte Pillerone to the towers of the Castle of Scrivellano, and down where the river Trebbia flows calmly down in the valley.
We know the typical songs and dances, the sound of the Apennine pipe, the smell of coppa and salami. In these lands, wine is a part of history: at first during the Roman Empire and later with the monks of San Colombano, who introduced new modern winemaking techniques as long ago as in the seventh century. It is no accident that Ernest Hemingway, who travelled over this valley at the beginning of the twentieth-century, wrote: “Today I crossed the most beautiful valley in the world”.
Piacenza, spirit of pioneers
We inhabitants of Piacenza like being the first: we were the first Roman colony in the North of Italy 200 years before Christ; we were the first to ask in 1848 for the annexation to the Kingdom of Sardinia, which was the core of future Italy; we are the only ones in Italy to produce three DOP cured meats – coppa, bacon and salami. We met the Visconti, the Farnese and the Borbone families, the French and the Austrian, war and peace. A bit of such spirit of pioneers is still present today in everything we do: we are ambitious, passionate, genuine and brave lovers of our land.
When distinctiveness is culture
The aristocrats of the Italian courts would say: “Roba de Piasensa” (Piacenza stuff) to describe the most delicious cured meats and cheeses. We live in the land of good food: excellent cured meats (such as coppa, salami and bacon), famous cheeses (first of all Grana Padano), the pisarei, the anolini, the ravioli, the roast duck and the horse sauce, the sbrisolona and the ciambella, the many varieties of apples and pears growing along the river Trebbia. It is no accident that, thanks to such typical products, the Piacenza wine has been made for two thousand years.
The old vineyards of Piacenza
The fine Piacenza wines were sent to the French and the Spanish courts as long ago as the Middle Ages because they were very appreciated: Gutturnio, Ortrugo, Barbera and Malvasia, still or sparkling, new or aged wines. Here wine is an old history: suffice it to say that at the end of the nineteenth century the gutturium, an ancient silver jug precursor of the tastevin, was fished out of the near river Po, which later gave its name to one of our most famous wines. All the banqueters drank from the gutturium passing it from hand to hand. This is why in Piacenza if you drink, you drink mainly in company.