Coltivare

Ingredients first at the Langhe bench

The first decision is what the product will allow. At Coltivare in La Morra, Luca Zecchin builds a restaurant around the garden, the vineyard and the pass. He is a connoisseur of Langhe cooking and one of the more recent disciples of Lidia Alciati, with twenty years of Michelin-starred kitchens behind him, and he has made his home in this territory for many years.

The kitchen asks for restraint: when to leave a vegetable alone, when acidity should cut through fat, when smoke can support a dish without taking it over. The restaurant sits within Coltivare Agri.Relais, a farmhouse beside the Brandini winery in the Langhe that reopened in this form in April 2023, and its work depends on proximity: garden, greenhouse, chicken coop, cellar, and the growers close enough to keep the supply chain legible.

A garden measured against the pass

The program gives the bench real limits. The restaurant draws 30% of its products from its own vegetable garden, with other suppliers working within a 20-30 km radius. Those figures matter because the cooking is not using locality as a decoration. It sets the day’s terms. Seeds start in the greenhouse; the garden follows biodynamic practice without chemicals; the chicken coop holds 14 hens fed organic seeds and garden waste. The cellar has produced certified organic wines since 2011.

On the plate, Piedmontese memory remains visible without being left untouched. Plin al tovagliolo sits beside a more personal grill language, where flame and smoke move through vegetables, fish, meat, and even sweets. La carota, a barbecued carrot fondant cooked in fig leaves, makes the point with economy: sweetness, heat, leaf, and acid in a tight sequence. Spaghetto di enkir brings smoked sturgeon, Val di Maggia pepper, and black sesame crumble to a grain with its own firmness. Ris e coi turns rice and cabbage into roasted extract, black cabbage cream and chips, tapioca in red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and marinated cabbage. Animella puts sweetbreads with Italian caviar and beurre blanc on the grill menu. The method is not rusticity dressed for service. It is the long way applied to what the land gives first.

The room beside the vineyards

The room keeps its voice low. Modern linear architecture, pastel greys, refined furnishings, a fireplace, and large windows hold the view over vineyards and the swimming pool without turning the meal into scenery. The pass belongs to a formal tasting menu format, but the place remains tied to the agri-relais around it: rooms, garden, cellar, and the working property at borgata Brandini.

That closeness changes the atmosphere of the craft. A dish can leave the kitchen carrying the same field logic that shaped it earlier in the day; a wine can come from the cellar beside the restaurant rather than from a distant idea of Piedmont. The quiet in the room gives those details space. If nothing needs announcing, the plate can stay close to the bench. The carrot, the plin, the 14 hens and the window line face the Langhe vineyards.