LE CASCINETTE
Events and Classes
We offer wine tastings, dinners, cooking and wine pairing classes, and host special occasions tailored to your interests. Our events and classes are designed to let our guests experience the wine and food of Piedmont, learn new culinary ideas, gain wine pairing skills, and learn Italian cooking techniques. Carlo Forzani leads the cooking and wine pairing classes and will be with you every day. Carlo is the wine producer at Le Cascinette and has an extensive knowledge of Italian wine. Carlo also learned Piemontese cooking from his father, a chef, and is an accomplished Italian cook who has focused on Piemontese food since he was a child. We want you to enjoy your visit to Le Cascinette and have the chance to interact with us. Carlo and Reka Ludanyi will be your personal hosts throughout the day. We encourage lively discussions, collaboration, and the exchange of ideas.
Wine Tastings: We have a one hour program to introduce you to our wines. We can also tailor a tasting to your interests, which can include a tour of our vineyard, a cellar visit, and a tasting of wines from other Alto Piemonte producers. Tastings include a discussion of the basics of how to evaluate the elements of wine and how to pair wine with food. Lunch may be included to expand the experience.
Custom Dinners: We offer dinners designed to introduce you to the food and wine of Piedmont. We can recommend menus with wines paired to the food, or you may create your own menu and wine selection in consultation with us. Dinners include the opportunity to discuss the food and wines on the menu prior to dinner and throughout the evening. Dinners may be reserved for two to eight guests.
Wine Pairing and Cooking Classes: Classes begin in the morning, continue after lunch and include a mid-afternoon break. At dinner we enjoy the food we prepared during the day paired with wines that enhance our menu items. Lessons are structured but instruction and discussion are informal. Classes include culinary ideas, recipes, and techniques our guests can take home to use every day. Also included are the basics of tasting wine and pairing wine with food to make choosing a wine straightforward and enhance your dining experience. Classes also include menu planning, presentation, and the basics of organizing a successful Italian dinner party.
How Wine is Made: This class focuses on the fundamentals of winemaking, beginning in the vineyard, continuing into the cellar, and through the process of clarifying, aging, bottling, and proper storage. We will consider the elements of tasting and evaluating wine from the time it is a week old, through its first year, and then on to older vintages. This class is designed to provide a basic understanding of the viticulture, science and art of winemaking to enhance your enjoyment of the wine in your glass.
Tours: We offer a week long immersive food and wine program which includes visits to nearby destinations. Please see the Tours page which follows.
Special Occasions: We host farm-to-table dinners, parties, weddings, and other events tailored to your specifications. Special occasions can be held at our winery or in one of our vineyards.
All events and classes are by reservation.
Below: Preparing food in our winery kitchen is a daily event.
Making Piemontese agnolotti with hand rolled egg pasta and a veal and herb filling.
Some appetizers: Top: Burrata with heirloom tomatoes from our garden. Bottom left: Porcini mushrooms foraged from the woods behind our winery, dressed with parmesan slivers, Ligurian olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper; bottom right: Frittata with squash blossoms ready for a minute under the broiler.
Top: Onion and tomato foccaccia ready for the oven. Below: Our gardiniera, pickled garden vegetables, to accompany the traditional Piemontese plate of prosciutto and other salumi and charcuterie.
First courses made in our kitchen: From left to right: Piemontese agnolotti with butter; pappardelle with duck sauce; pasta and bean soup.
Piedmont is close to the Mediteranean Sea and has a long tradition of pristine seafood. Left: Fresh tuna Riviera style; right: Sea bream in tomato sauce.
At left: Roast chicken from a local farm. These chickens free range in the woods and fields: their taste is a revelation; At right: A bone-in ribeye grilled stove-top. Razza Piemontese, the local breed of cattle, is renowned for its flavor and is as tender as butter.
Sometimes we want something from a different region of Italy as, at left, Sardinian ricotta, polenta and olive oil cake with a glaze of blood oranges. Right, wine from our neighbors Gianfranco and Alessandro Negri.