Museo della Civiltà Contadina – Cascina Rossa (Diano d'Alba)

At Cascina Rossa, a family winery in the Valle Talloria hamlet of Diano d'Alba, the old farm tools of the Langhe have found a second life. The Rural Civilization Museum here traces how one farm moved from mixed peasant agriculture to specialised winegrowing, told by the Veglio family, sixth-generation growers of Dolcetto.

Why it matters

Museums about rural life are common in Piedmont, but this one is unusual in staying inside a working farm. The Municipality of Diano d'Alba presents the museum in its official tourist itinerary as a small museum centred on viticulture, documenting the farm's century-long shift from mixed farming to specialised wine production. The tools on display connect the farm's history with the work of winegrowing.

What to notice

The displays gather the ordinary equipment of peasant labour in the Langhe: implements that passed from hand to hand, gestures repeated across generations, tools renewed as farming changed. Against that general backdrop, the museum tells one farm's story: Cascina Rossa's own transformation over roughly a century from mixed agriculture to a wine estate whose Dolcetto vineyards now define the slopes around the buildings. The estate's history follows the arc from hillside cultivation to the production of wines shaped by the Diano d'Alba terroir.

Context and history

Cascina Rossa is the agricultural estate of the Veglio family, who have grown vines here for six generations and today are represented by the brothers Marco and Beppe Veglio with Marco's daughter Lucia. The estate's vineyards ring the farmhouse at Diano d'Alba, planted with Dolcetto for the Diano d'Alba DOCG and its sunniest sorì parcels, with Nebbiolo alongside them, plus Nebbiolo for Barolo and Moscato d'Asti at the Cascina Tezzo holding in Serralunga d'Alba and Barbera and Chardonnay at Montelupo Albese. The museum occupies the farmhouse's converted barn, where the family keeps the old photographs, work equipment and agricultural transport that trace the shift from mixed farming to winegrowing — the estate itself calls it the Museo della Vite e del Vino, the museum of the vine and wine. It remains a private, family-run initiative connected with the winery.