Monferrato covers the hills between the Po and the Apennines in the provinces of Asti and Alessandria, east and north of the Langhe, and it is the largest of the Piedmontese appellations by area. The country is gentler than the Langhe, a long sequence of rounded clay and limestone hills, cut by the Tanaro and dotted with castles from the centuries when this was a marquisate of its own.

Barbera is the grape of the region and covers more ground here than anywhere else: dark, high in acid, low in tannin, made light and fizzy for the table in the past and seriously, with oak and age, since the 1980s. Grignolino gives a pale, bitter, peppery red that is a local taste, Freisa another, and Ruchè di Castagnole Monferrato a scented one. The whites are Cortese and Moscato, and the underground cellars cut into the tuff at Canelli and elsewhere, the cattedrali sotterranee, are on the UNESCO list.