“You know what? Life’s good here.”

Nicola says it after an hour of dense conversation, full of rough edges and gentle touches, of enthusiasms and (above all) of struggles. He says it with a disarming naturalness, like someone who doesn’t need to convince anyone. After all, who would come here looking for something? Here, where the trains don’t stop – in fact, they simply don’t arrive – here, in the agricultural heart of Molise, life is good. It’s not a romantic illusion, it’s an awareness. In 2025, declaring that one lives well in an Italian rural and remote inland area resembles more of a political, existential, and countercultural act than a mere statement. It’s a rather courageous choice. And it’s also the spark from which the Società Agricola Alba has built everything: a visionary agricultural reality, a laboratory of contemporary rurality, a collective identity made of land and territory, of milk and animals, of gardens, forests, olive groves, of multifunctionality, and multitasking.

We are, as we were saying, in the heart of Molise, in Contrada Santa Lucia, 750 meters above sea level, between Campolieto and San Giovanni in Galdo, about a twenty-minute drive from CB (Campobasso, the regional capital, as locals call it). “But is Molise in Austria?” someone asked at a fair in Merano. “Oh, but really, is it in Italy?” they went on. “But what is Molise?” These are all real, spontaneous questions. Because Molise is that place that doesn’t exist. It pops up on Instagram like a black hole somewhere between Abruzzo and Puglia, with tons of memes and jokes that make no sense. There’s even a Facebook page called “Molisn’t – io non credo nell’esistenza del Molise” (Molisn’t – I don’t believe in the existence of Molise) with 63K followers and countless themed posts and gadgets. It is the most recently established Italian region, true, but that doesn’t justify this strange perception of it being a “joke region”. The fact is, in the common imagination, Molise is nothing more than a minor hybrid of Lazio, Campania, Puglia, and Abruzzo, which are indeed its bordering regions. Yet, they have very little to do with what is actually within those borders. It is profoundly rich, unjustly underrated, and still waiting to be fully explored. Especially from a gastronomic perspective, as Molise cuisine is unlike that of any other Italian region.