Inspiration: discover the Blog

Why the connoisseur's month is booked a year in advance — and what the experienced Italian traveller has come to expect from these particular weeks. Among the small private agreements that the experienced Italian traveller makes with the year, the most important is, in our view, the agreement about September. The agreement is that nothing else in the calendar will be allowed to interfere with it. School schedules, board meetings, the late summer demands of family life — these

An insider's autumn in Piedmont — the Alba truffle market, the cellars in their post-harvest mood, and the rituals that make this October week unrepeatable. There is a small wooden stall at the back of the Alba truffle market, on the third Saturday of October each year, that is run by a man named Battista whose family has been hunting the white truffle in the woods around Roddi for three generations. His stock on a typical Saturday is perhaps twenty pieces, ranging from the s