LANDSCAPE AND ECONOMY

of Luciano Bertello - photographs by Ettore Contino

“A place of ancient and intense landscape from the lands of the Albese towards “Piemont”,  as was indicated here the Turin plain, Corneliano offers through the centuries countless signs of that liveliness and enterprise which are characteristic of valley market towns.  A natural mercantile vocation has always accompanied farm activities, finding official recognition in the far away 1602, years in which Charles Emanuel, with royal licence, permits the cornelianese community “to have a market in this place on Thursday of each week”.

As is evident from the urban structure itself:  a majestic, harmonious and elegant square very rare to find, but as soon as you go behind the first row of houses, there are fields and vegetable gardens,and then  you procede to vineyards and woods without boundaries.

In short, Corneliano has never wanted to renounce its tradition and farming culture, and signs of the past bestow on the village.  An atmosphere which seems suspended in time:the market square and “balon" ( fistball), the country roads, the “sghic” ( a word which indicates  a country sheiling or house in ruins) and the belltowers; the arch and the castle tower, the town hall porticos and the local shops; and then the traditional roof tiles one on top of the other.

In the country landscape, Corneliano reassumes that variety of cultivation and colours which are typical of the Roero hills. The woods and vineyards divide the hillsides, following century-old boundaries rigidly determined by different exposures.

The wine-growing landscape is very special:  many small vineyards of the most strange geometrical shapes, perforated by swaying cane-brakes and tiny “ciabòt (refuge or tool shed). 

 

The natural wine vocation of the land with its loose, sun-kissed soil, offers high quality products, among which stand out the exuberant Roero Nebbiolo, the noble Arneis and surprising young Favorita.  The latter vineyard being of mysterious origins and to which Corneliano has for a long time connected its name, in virtue of a chosen production and a market which in the last decades of the XX century, attracted the most well-known producers of the Alba and Asti areas.

But in the landscape and economy of the village, as in that of the Roero, stands out the considerable and significant presence of the orchards, which with their blossoms beautify the spring.

The Roero farmer is, in fact,  from several generations, and now by tradition, a fruit farmer, from  when that is, at the  end of the XIX century, specialised peach farming ( of which Roero boasts primogeniture), has changed the conditions and mentality of the local economy.

 

Corneliano has also always distinguished itself in peach farming, for the quality of its product and for the iniziative of its inhabitants.  In fact as from 1819 alongside the commerce of wine there was the sale of fruit, of the species “persici (peaches), “griotte” (a type of cherry) and  “green peas”, and in the first half of the XX century, boasted the largest area of peaches in Roero sustained by the marketing spirit already mentioned, which in 1926,  results in the institution of a daily peach market in Corneliano, second only to Canale.

And it’s precisely to the peach and the favorita, once sought after as table wine that one of the most significant economic figures of Corneliano is tied :  the basketmaker.  Already well-known at the end of the XIX century, the Cornelianese basketmakers distinguished themselves for the quality and variety of the product and for their particular use of gestures which characterized them socially speaking.  A further example of that balance, which still today shapes the economic reality of Corneliano, giving an opportunity for farms, handicraft activities and commercial and modern industries to live in harmony, united by that ambition which is an essential condition and a guarantee of quality.