The low hills of the Monferrato, in Piedmont, roll between the Po to the north and the Tanaro to the south, and the Inferot label points at the part of them near Cella Monte, Rosignano and Frassinello, ten kilometres from Casale Monferrato. This is soft country, sandstone ridges clothed in vines, with brick villages on the crests and fog in the valleys on autumn mornings.
The word Inferot is the Piedmontese form of infernot, the small cellars cut by hand into the soft local sandstone, the Pietra da Cantoni, beneath village houses. They are tiny, cool rooms, sometimes with niches for bottles, shelves and a stone table, and the family would go down to taste its wine or hide it from tax collectors. The tradition is nineteenth-century and mostly local, and the infernot cellars, together with the vineyards, are part of the landscape listed by UNESCO in 2014 as the Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont, Langhe-Roero and Monferrato. Cella Monte has a small museum and several of the cellars can be visited, though many are private and open only by arrangement.
The riding is delightful if you like steady, curving small roads and are happy with low speed. The provincial roads between Rosignano, Ozzano and Casale follow the ridges, climbing and dropping with views over the vineyards, and there is almost no traffic apart from tractors at harvest. The surface is variable, with patches and some gravel on the farm tracks, and the best time is September and October, when the grape harvest is in progress and the air smells of must. Summer is hot and slightly hazy, and winter fog makes the roads slippery in the early hours.
Local flavours are Barbera and Grignolino, a pale, peppery red that is made almost nowhere else, together with Freisa. Food is hearty: agnolotti, bagna cauda in the cold months, and bollito misto. Frassinello and Cella Monte are tiny villages, so do not rely on them for fuel. Casale Monferrato, ten kilometres away and with some thirty thousand people, has stations, bakeries and good restaurants, and it also has a fine synagogue and a lively market. Book a table ahead on autumn weekends, because the wine country fills with visitors.