There are no highways nearby. The railroad stops in Tirano, then you have to take a bus for an hour to get there. At 4,000 feet above sea level in Valtellina, getting to Bormio is a bit more difficult than reaching Cortina or St. Moritz. “What a shame,” the locals say. But the true mountain enthusiasts, those who can’t wait to reach the wide valley stretching between the Alps in the heart of Stelvio National Park think it’s a stroke of luck. No painted houses with balconies like in the heart of South Tyrol, none of those elaborate cottages announcing the most famous mountain destinations. Here you see simple stone houses, vineyards able to resist the frost, and a town of 4,000 inhabitants. The Frodolfo River passes through and the town is divided into five tiny districts. Nobody wears fur coats or hats here. Not even if they can afford it. The inhabitants here enjoy the emotional luxury of being able to choose among the various souls such a place embodies – which says a lot about this fiercely Catholic valley, intact and protected today, although in the past it was contested by Napoleon Bonaparte, Austria, and then during the First and the Second World Wars due to its strategic position.
The chic Lapland
If you want to combine comfort with a spiritual experience in the snow, you have two choices: either aim for extreme adventure destinations with a club, or stay at Kelo Resort, a luxury mountain lodge at 8,850 feet in altitude above Bormio. The last cable car to Santa Caterina di Valfurva, the town at the bottom, leaves at four. As the skiers refreshing themselves in the parlor downstairs disappear, you’ll be up close and personal with the Ortles-Cevedale peaks, the night, and the silence, protected by walls of the log-cabin style lodge made of “kelo,” centuries-old Lapland fir trees brought up there by specially summoned Finnish craftsmen. This “madness” was built by Beppe Bonseri, a brilliant mind from Valtellina who while touring the world with the Italian national ski champions, noted a similarity between these peaks and the most inaccessible northern destinations. Eleven suites, a small restaurant, fireplaces, sauna, all covered with fur. In the evening you can enjoy a before- or after-dinner drink in one of the lodge’s igloos. There is also an igloo bedroom for those who love extreme experiences. You’ll eat proudly local, but highly refined cuisine, with dishes prepared by a 20-year-old chef who is already part of the group of Italian junior chefs: Gnocchi with a cream of mountain cheese, polenta crust, dry alpine flowers; wild game and pumpkin ravioli; beef ganassino with potato rösti.
At the thermal spa with Pliny
In the days of ancient Rome, Pliny came here to be healed, followed by Roman emperors and medieval monks. Their journeys were arduous considering that the Stelvio opened in 1823. From then on, with an easier way to arrive, came the members of the Austrian imperial court and, little by little, everyone else – all seduced by the hot springs along a path of underground caves and natural pools. But don’t think of it as a place for old people. Hardy types come here in winter, delighted to leave the intense warmth (98-107 degrees) and cross some 35 yards barefoot out in the snow to step into tubs of hot water overlooking the mountain peaks. Two fascinating new rooms have just been inaugurated inside: the salt room where you can take deep breaths while meditating, and a room with wicker baskets hanging from the ceiling where you can meditate while swinging. Afterwards you’ll have no problem enjoying a traditional dinner at the restaurant of Bagni Vecchi, the hotel next to the thermal spa, or you can go down to the Grand Hotel Bagni Nuovi further below for an immersion in Belle Epoque grandeur.
Farmer’s arms still at work
In some mountain destinations success has eliminated the industrious peasant soul. Not here. In the farm at Taulà, with its small shop, Filippo Forini and Layla Ricci are living out a story of love and cheese. When he was eighteen Filippo asked for a cow instead of a car, he enrolled in dairyman school and began working. Layla, meanwhile, came back from an unsatisfactory trip to Paris to marry and help him. They milk their 25 original brown cows in the evening, lay out hay for the small, stocky local cows in the morning, then it’s time to make curd, maneuver the churn, mix and package the butter, feed the calf, cook and sell, and raise their young children. You’ll never taste a more delicious ricotta, buttermilk or formaggella (soft, creamy cheese). Rini Agritourismo also offers an artisanal atmosphere without any pretense. It’s not the scheme of some newly arrived entrepreneur, but the initiative of an old local family. The restaurant’s dining room – where you can enjoy a tasty pasta dish of buckwheat pizzoccheri and sciatt combination, or venison cutlets with juniper berries – has a large bay window overlooking the stable where 50 cows ruminate. In the summer they graze on the property’s mountain hay. Even the owners of a stable full of magnificent horses have to do the most menial jobs. When he’s not accompanying his guests in a carriage along the snowy landscapes, the Alpine Friesian owner Jacopo Martinelli is the valley’s trusted blacksmith, plumber, and electrician.
The dark flours
You’ll find buckwheat here – now all the rage. It doesn’t come from a grain, but from the Polygonaceae family. Then there’s rye, a grain that grows well in such inhospitable terrain. These dark, pasty flours are pleasantly rustic – as is the circular rye bread and the bread for holidays full of raisins, nuts and dried figs cooked in the ancient restored oven in Berola, above Ponte in Valtellina. But this has long been the sustenance of a very poor farming civilization, which nourished itself with the ground grains of the “forest,” a far cry from the luxuriously blonde ears of wheat. Indeed, the bakery and patisserie Eredi Romani, which today makes irresistible tarts, nut cakes and chocolate breads, and is nicknamed Le Bonette (The Bonnets) after the two owners who once ran the shop, made its first “aristocratic” cake only in the 1980s by using the recipe of the famous pastry chef Hanselmann of St. Moritz. But there will be trouble for anyone who suggests that pizzoccheri are a substitute for tagliatelle in the kitchen of the restaurant Vecchia Combo, where Rina and her daughter Tiziana make them on the spot, even three times during evenings with many guests. The restaurant celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Every inhabitant of Bormio and those visiting on vacation come to try them, alternating them with the dishes of the day: menestra del mak, which is basically barley soup, manfrigoli, taroz, sausages with Taragna polenta. All local specialties that you’ll find interpreted in a more refined manner at Locanda Altavilla, a historic restaurant opened in Bianzone in 1958, one kilometer from the main road to Tirano. The owner, after having worked in Paris before returning to the kitchen with his mother, added his touch of nouvelle cuisine: the humble taroz is no longer a soup of leftovers, becoming a basket of stuffed pasta; the manfrigola is filled with bechamel; the venison is served with a pear baked in Sfursat and caramelized chestnuts. You’ll also get all the information you need to pass for an authentic gourmet: the beef bresaola has to be the one made by Stefano Besseghini in Tirano with his secret curing technique; the best wheat is grown in Teglio; sciatt, which many attribute the first to Cicci Franchetti of the Restaurant Cerere in Ponte in Valtellina in the 1970s, were previously called chisoi and were made with two different millings of buckwheat.
Must-try platters
Don’t go for the usual mixed platter of cured meats and cheeses. These specialties can be enjoyed in single tastings. The bresaola from Valtellina is famous. And with good reason: it’s made with only salt, pepper, cinnamon, cloves and crushed garlic using the cuts of beef. Plus the more frugal “slinzegha,” strips obtained from bresaola trimmings. But here the mountain civilization has also rediscovered game: the butcher Alfonso Boscacci, who boasts a National Institute of Rural Sociology certificate for “the discovery of cured deer meats and the collaboration between agriculture, crafts and trade,” cures and seasons the meats himself. The feather in his cap is deer bresaola and roe deer violino, a small ham so named because it’s held with the left arm, resting on the shoulder, and the knife for slicing is held in the other hand like a bow. You should also buy pepper lonzino before going back home, as well as some pork filzetta and bondiola, coppa, and liver mortadella. Eat them with rye bread and a glass of the same Sassella that Boscacci uses to cure bresaola. The cheeses deserve an episode all on their own: start with cow and/or goat milk scimudin, a slightly bitter creamy soft cheese, then continue with casera, PDO since 1996. Finish with the spicy, bitto cheese, full of holes, an exceptional mountain product. Enjoy them with crisp rye bread sticks to counteract the cheesy softness and bless them with the perfectly intense notes of a Grumello.
These wines need heroes
All the way up to Tirano the hills facing south are an elaborate tapestry of vineyards: they are steeper and more dangerous than those of South Tyrol, and just a tiny bit less precipitous than those of Cinque Terre or Etna. They call them “heroic vineyards” because it takes a heroic will to go into the mountains to build walls to support the few meters of land the vines cling to, to prune them according to the classic “Valtellina archetto” method and to hand pick the grapes, put them in baskets, and go back down into town. And then go back up. The grape variety is Nebbiolo, the same with which Barolo is made in Piedmont, but here they call it Chiavennasca. Less austere Nebbiolos are the result: more velvety, more enjoyable by inexperienced palates, but able to withstand aging well. They are little known because of the small quantities produced, but two wines are proof of their quality after having been named DOCGs: Valtellina Superiore, divided into five sub-zones – Grumello, Sassella, Maroggia, Inferno, Valgella – and Sfursat, dialect for “strained,” the dry red passito, ideally the local correspondent of Amarone, forced to concentrate for three months on racks to make up for the sugar lacking from the bunches which grew in such stingy mountain heat.
The pharmacist and mountain herbs
Perhaps you already knew that Bormio is the birthplace of the liquor Amaro Braulio, whose mountain herbs grow on Mount Braulio. The amaro was created in 1875 by the pharmacist and chemist Francis Peloni. What Dr. Peloni certainly didn’t foresee was that his bitter liquor, sold in pharmacies for stomach-curing and digestive properties, would be adopted, along with other historical elixirs, by contemporary mixologists to become Braulio Spritz with Prosecco and seltzer, and Cobra, a long drink with Coca-Cola and Braulio – good (it seems) with pizza. You can order them along the central Via Roma in the Steak House Braulio, above the cellars (which you can visit) for the preparation and aging of the celebrated bitter. If you’re lucky, Edoardo Tarantola Peloni in person will guide you through the 65,000 square feet and five underground floors. He is the descendant, along with his brothers, of the family that keeps the secret and unchanged formula of the founder. To make it even more mysterious, you’ll be shown the four herbs, roots, berries and flowers, whose quantity is secret, that go into the liquor: namely gentian, wormwood, juniper and taneda, the dialect name for Achillea nutmeg. All the herbs and other components that compose the bitter are macerated in each infuser. Dried and pounded, they are macerated in a solution of alcohol and water for a month, then water and sugar are added to reach 21 percent alcohol. It then rests no less than 15 months in oak barrels for the classic Braulio – 24 months for the reserve – before it’s bottled. The highlight of the path arrives at 25 meters below ground in the scenic “atelier cellar” desired by Campari, the holder of the brand today, shining with Slavonian oak barrels. An underground cathedral. Yet Edoardo Tarantola Peloni wanders around like a conscientious landlord with only three employees, turning off lights, checking doors and then climbing upstairs where he lives. It comes naturally to ask him banal questions: when does he goes out, where does he go to eat? “Eira, a guesthouse I visited with my parents as a child.” And for a fancy dinner? “Filo, a charming old barn, with bold but judicious versions of local dishes.”
Photos by Giacomo Bretzel