Sostegno is a small hill village on the eastern side of the province of Biella, in the band of low, wooded hills that runs between the Biellese and the Valsesia in north-west Piedmont. On a clear morning the whole southern face of Monte Rosa stands up white beyond the ridges to the north, so close and so enormous that it seems to belong to a different scale of world.
These hills are wine country, though modestly so. The slopes around Sostegno, Lozzolo and Roasio produce Bramaterra and other Nebbiolo-based reds of the Alto Piemonte, lighter and more mineral than the famous Barolo further south, and grown on soils of volcanic and glacial origin. Vineyards cling to sunny slopes among chestnut woods, and the villages have the slightly faded, stone-and-shutters look of rural Piedmont.
The riding is lovely and very little known. Narrow roads twist over the hills from village to village, with tight bends, short steep climbs and surprise views of the Alps, then drop to the plain where the rice fields of the Baraggia begin. Surfaces are variable, sometimes broken, and you will share the lanes with tractors and the occasional cyclist. Further north, the Panoramica Zegna above Trivero, a scenic road built by the wool industrialist Ermenegildo Zegna in the 1930s, climbs through rhododendrons and beech woods with views over the plain, and it makes a superb extension.
Biella, a wool town with a long textile tradition, is the nearest place with full services, and smaller towns like Gattinara and Cossato have fuel and food. As a start and finish, Sostegno is quiet and atmospheric, best at the beginning or end of the day when the light is low and the mountain glows.