“SHORT SUPPLY CHAIN AT THE UNESCO CASTLE”:
THE REGION TELLS ITS STORY THROUGH ITS EXCELLENCES
From the permanent exhibition at the Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour to tastings and the “Narrated Dinners”: the project dedicated to promoting local excellence at Grinzane Cavour Castle comes to a close.
GRINZANE CAVOUR, 25 September 2026 – Transforming one of the iconic landmarks of the Langhe into a permanent showcase for local products, while creating new opportunities for interaction between producers, their products, and the tens of thousands of visitors who come to Grinzane Cavour Castle each year. This was the guiding vision behind “Short Supply Chain at the UNESCO Castle”, the initiative promoting local production chains carried out by the Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour and funded under the 2023–2027 Piedmont Rural Development Programme – SRG07.1 measure. The project has made it possible to place several local farms at the centre, offering food and wine products of outstanding excellence and transforming the Castle into not only a venue for exhibition, but also a place where local products can be discovered, tasted, and shared through engaging experiences.
A first action focused on creating, within the spaces of the Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour, a permanent exhibition with direct sales of short‑supply‑chain products, offering local producers a showcase inside one of the most visited cultural and tourist destinations in the Langhe, a designated UNESCO site. In 2025, Grinzane Cavour Castle welcomed 54,364 visitors, confirming the strong attendance levels achieved in recent years and reinforcing its role as one of the area’s leading cultural attractions.
Alongside the permanent presence of the products, a schedule of initiatives was introduced to encourage direct contact with the public. Every weekend from 9 May to 12 July 2026, the Castle hosted activities of hospitality, presentation and enhancement of short‑supply‑chain productions, allowing visitors to explore their characteristics, origin and connection with the region. The products also took centre stage in tasting and sampling counters featured in several of the events hosted by the Castle: from the eleventh anniversary of the recognition of the Vineyard Landscape of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, celebrated on 21 June 2025, to the awarding of the hillside slopes in the UNESCO territories on 17 May of this year, and to the twelfth UNESCO anniversary, celebrated on 20 June last.
Completing the pathway, in the month of July, were the “Narrated Dinners”, two events held in the Castle’s Park that transformed products and cuisine into tools for narrating the culture, memory and identity of the Langhe. Created together with the actor, director and storyteller of the region Paolo Tibaldi and with resident chef Alessandro Mecca, the evenings of 16 and 23 July – “Flavours that Speak” and “The Hills Within” – intertwined gastronomy and narration, accompanying participants in the discovery of Piedmontese gastronomic traditions and of the stories, the people and the landscapes that lie at their origin.
“With this project, we wanted to give concrete form to the concept of short supply chain, bringing the region’s productions into the heart of a place that welcomes tens of thousands of visitors every year, – comment Roberto Bodrito, president of the Enoteca Regionale Piemontese Cavour, together with vice‑presidents Alberto Gatto and Gianfranco Garau, respectively mayors of Alba and Grinzane Cavour -. The Castle of Grinzane Cavour is an extraordinary showcase for the Langhe and for Piedmont: alongside its historical, cultural and landscape heritage, we wanted to highlight even more that heritage made up of farms, products, knowledge and people who contribute decisively to the identity of these hills. The permanent exhibition, the meetings with the public, the tastings and the Narrated Dinners have been different tools of a single narrative, built around the quality and authenticity of our productions. We believe that this very ability to create a direct relationship between those who produce and those who visit the region represents one of the most meaningful elements left by the project: not only promoting a product, but allowing people to understand its origin, the work it contains and the landscape from which it is born. It is a path we intend to continue, making the Enoteca and the Castle places increasingly capable of narrating and enhancing Piedmont through its excellences.”
The “Short Supply Chain at the UNESCO Castle” project has thus developed a pathway that, from the continuous presence of the productions within the Enoteca’s spaces to the tasting and storytelling experiences, has connected product, producer, visitor and region. It is a model in which the short supply chain becomes not only a method of commercialisation, but also an opportunity for knowledge and a tool for enhancing local identity. The initiative was carried out within the framework of the project aimed at promoting local products and developing short supply chains in local markets, promoted by the Piedmont Region and by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development 2023–2027 through measure SRG07.1.
