Monday, May 26, 2003 Click here to view this page in Italian
	Back in March, student Colette Kovach having informed Prof. Jeantet that her family had its roots in the Piedmont region of Italy, we started researching the possibility of a transalpine excursion. Colette pored through family albums and sought information about ancestors and relatives from her aged grandfather, while Prof. Jeantet used the internet to pinpoint the location of the village and to e-mail an internet-connected resident of the village who proved to be most enthusiastic at the prospect of helping us. Now, some two months after we had begun our search on the internet from an office in Olin Hall, we set out early one Sunday morning across the Alps to find Colette's grandfather's native village of Cossombrato, a few miles north of Asti, an area well known for its vineyards and its sparkling Asti Spumante wine. Armed with maps and old family pictures, we drove across the Alps through the Fréjus road tunnel in direction of Turin, and in about three hours' time reached our destination ; we then sought out our contact, Mr Silvio Ciuccetti, so that we might have a guide who could help us find our way around and perhaps locate some of Colette's cousins. It must be noted that Colette's grandfather, now 91 years old, has never been back to Italy since emigrating to the US some eighty years ago, and that contact with possible cousins has been lost over the years... We brought with us scanned printouts of an eighty-year-old post card of the local chapel (La Madonna dell'Olmeto, at left above) and of a family photo which showed Colette's great-great aunt and uncle back in the 1920s (photo at right).
	As we arrived in Cossombrato, a typical hill town of northern Italy, we paused for a first photo of Colette standing next to the sign at the entrance of her ancestral home. We then proceeded up a steep hill to the tiny village square where we found our contact waiting for us. After handshakes and kisses, Silvio informed us that we would start the day at the vineyard of a friend, then go to lunch, then visit his house, then go back to the vineyard, and finally meet a prominent pediatrician who is the village's unofficial historian. It was not quite noon, and we wondered how we could possibly fit all of these activities into mere hours, but that was before we knew Silvio, who is a whirlwind of energy, ressourcefulness and enthusiasm. We followed Silvio to a tree-lined alley and up a steep hill to the home of the Quarello family, prominent vintners of Cossombrato. There we were greeted warmly, like long-lost family, and we sat under the trees on a high terrace sampling a wonderfully peppery and full-bodied wine from the 2001 harvest. Julie pointed out later that she felt she was in an Olive Garden commercial, which is a pretty accurate way to describe that particular scene!
	We met Carlo Quarello, his wife Bianca and son Valerio, who was quite fluent in English, while Carlo communicated in French, which he admitted not having practiced since high school. They studied the pictures that Colette had brought, and Carlo, an avid postcard collector, noted that, to his astonishment, he did not know the postcard that for us was the only view we had ever seen of Cossombrato and which had been kept by Colette's family in the States for some eighty years as the only visual memento of her ancestral home. We drank the wonderful red wine and snacked on local prosciutto that we wrapped around breadsticks. After an hour and a half of chatting, we went to a local restaurant for lunch, little expecting to find ourselves sitting at a table with some twenty other people, all animatedly waving their hands as we all conversed in a mostly intelligible mix of French and Italian colored on occasion with a smattering of English.
	The lunch itself merits a parenthesis: we were served a lavish meal, as was everyone else in the entire restaurant, sampling a bit of just about everything that the restaurant makes. We nibbled our way through some nine antipasti (the nine courses before the pasta), then had some pasta for the tenth course, and then gave up. Basta! There was no way any of us could then eat the main course which itself consisted of four different meats and five different vegetables... we short-circuited the normal procedure, skipping the meat dishes and cheese courses, but rather asked for a light dessert, ending the meal on what thus turned out to be an eleventh course instead of proceeding through all seventeen. Below, pictures of each of the dishes we sampled: first course : carpaccio (raw beef) second course : cream cheese with garlic third course : a ham paté with aspic fourth course : salmon and curry fifth course : a puff pastry ravioli sixth course : eggplant soufflé seventh course : fresh asparagus eighth course : lemon sherbet ninth course : gnocchi tenth course : pasta ravioli
	And finally, unable to face the prospect of sampling the main dish, we opted for dessert, fresh strawberries with the creamiest ice cream any of us had ever tasted. Of course, we did have coffee afterwards, and then walked off an inconsequential amount of calories walking to the church (seen in the postcard), realizing in the process that the old view simply could not be reproduced, the vineyards in the old view having in the past century been replaced by an impenetrable jungle of tall trees. But we did see the church and the house in which Colette's grandfather was born back in 1911... Colette stands in front of the church door; her grandfather's birthplace is in the background the closest we could get to reproducing the old postcard view: the church as seen from the Quarellos' house
	After lunch, another visit with the Quarello family, sampling more wine and meeting many of their friends; by this time, Colette was being introduced as a Cossombratese, and judging by the smile that never left her face she was feeling right at home. The photo at right shows Carlo Quarello discussing the merits of his excellent wine; he produces only 20,000 bottles a year of this particular vintage which is highly sought after by connoisseurs.
	It should be noted that Colette, who claims always to get migraines from red wine (a know migraine trigger), drank the Cossombrato wine with no ill effects. (We speculated that she was genetically suited to drink only this type of red wine.) Carlo generously gave each of us a couple of bottles of his excellent wine. Colette will bring hers back to the States to give to her grandfather. The other bottles probably have a much shorter life expectancy...! The photo at left shows our guide and newfound friend, Silvio Ciucetti. Silvio is an accomplished painter and is a director of wildlife documentaries for the national Italian television company RAI. Without Silvio, we never would have had the opportunity to meet the wonderfully warm and hospitable people by whom we all will remember this very special day. Silvio, despite our protestations, insisted on paying for the gargantuan lunch that was a major feature of the day. We hope to return the favor some day in France or in the States.
	At the end of the afternoon, we went to see a prominent doctor who carefully examined Colette's genealogical forms, finally informing us that she still had one living relative in the village. But Italy being Italy, and village life being village life, we figured out that there must be some kind of feud between the good doctor and the last of Colette's relatives, and he would not tell us who she was or how we could find her. Well, maybe next time...
	Despite this mishap, we judged the day to have been a great success, and finally hit the road again after 7pm, just in time to see the sun illuminating the wheat and poppies in a field at the foot of the Cossombrato hill. As we headed west back toward the Alps, we passed Turin and saw the clouds building, which reminded us of the nasty weather we had left behind on the other side of the Alps. As we neared the tunnel entrance, rain started to fall, and the windshield wipers decided to quit. So we raced into the tunnel hoping that it would not be raining on the other side.
	12.2 kilometers later, we came out of the tunnel on the French side and were greeted by a light drizzle which was sufficient to make it impossible to drive at night with the glare of oncoming headlights. It was late Sunday evening, and as one might expect there was not an open service station to be found. So our friend and driver Pascal called his insurance company, and within ten minutes a mechanic found us and expertly fixed the problem , tightening a bolt that had come loose. Our day ended back in Faverges at 11:30pm, so that we all had time to recuperate for our respective jobs and classes the next morning.
	Overall, our only regret is that only two of our students could enjoy this day; but given the emotional importance of this trip for Colette, Prof. Jeantet thought it best to limit the number of people so that while we provided her with a small group for support, Colette could nonetheless be the center of attention. At the end of the day, Colette could only agree that this strategy had been most appropriate. Our special thanks go to Silvio Ciuccetti and the Quarello family, whose generosity and hospitality made our visit a memorable one, and who remind us that in any visit, it is the people that one meets that provide us with the best memories.
	Questions? Comments? Please write by clicking the @ link below
	You are visitor No. (more or less) to one of our "Trip" pages in quite a while. Thanks for stopping by!
	Page and images ©2003 by Robert F. Jeantet - End of page-piedmont -