Jumelage avec la ville de Grinzane Cavour
The village of Grinzane Cavour, in the Piedmont region, with its 2,000 inhabitants, is 5 km from Alba, the home of the white truffle, dubbed the town of a hundred towers. Its impressive castle stands proudly amidst one of the most picturesque landscapes of the Langhe region.
The main architect of Italian unification, Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, was mayor of the village and made the castle his place of residence in the C19th.
Every year, the castle hosts the award ceremony for one of Italy’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Grinzane Cavour Award. It also houses the Piedmont Regional Enoteca which was set up in 1967, the first in the region, and its restaurant serves traditional dishes.
The Order of the Knights of the Truffle and the Wines of Alba, set up in 1967, is headquartered at the Castle, and organizes in its magnificent Hall of Masks its regular meetings, called « chapters », as well as the National Organization of Cheese Lovers (ONAF).
A number of its halls and rooms are given over to a Museum of Ethnography which displays collections of objects of the local wine and food sector, a reconstitution of the cuisine of Alba of the C17th and C19th, an C18th distillery, a a cooper’s workshop, farm tools, and furniture, manuscripts and the sash of the Mayor, Count Cavour.
It was on 28 December 2009, on the occasion of the Little Truffles Market of Ménerbes, that the twinning convention was signed between Yves Rousset Rouard and Franco Sampo, both of whom had first been sworn in on the Town Hall Square.
The twinning convention places emphasis on bringing together the local associations of the two localities whose activities have a bearing on education, training, culture, sport and leisure and voluntary work. It also provides for exchanges between the brotherhoods of wine and truffles of Alba and their counterparts in the Luberon. Both communes undertake to cooperate in support of the socio-economic and cultural development of the local communities through community funding mechanisms. They seek to give backing to initiatives intended for the younger generations to which they wish to hand down a better world.
There can be no doubt that by bringing our two villages closer together in this way, through their respective associations, there will be growing interaction between the two communities and, further, between the two countries as also the brotherhoods of wine and truffles.
