I AM not admitting it’s a sign of old age but when the hipsters, the hapsters, the bloggers and the blaggers pile out the taxis into the late-night pleasures of downtown Turin I’ll hang back and say: “Er, ah … Just take me to the hotel.”

The truth is – though I don’t know it yet – I’ll be getting up early to see the Turin Shroud. The funny old thing is we’re actually only here for the beer. Three days in northern Italy to drink something called Menabrea. Strictly between you and me, I’ve been in that press-trip last-race-to-the-bar-movie many times, including the mutiny in Spain. Who thought flying 50 journalists to an island for lunch, hosing booze down their throats and expecting us to get back on the plane at 4pm was a good idea?

But let’s start at the beginning. A pre-dawn meeting at an airport; strangers introducing themselves; a quick run through an itinerary that like all itineraries has been managed down to the very second – can’t have us lunatics having any free time and causing mayhem. Then the freebie – sorry, very serious and interesting fact-finding mission – commences. And this has been no different. An hour or three after that first meeting, having oohed and aahed at how spectacular Turin is from the air, we’re being hurtled at speed towards an autostrada barrier, an Italian driver’s loafer buried deep in the carpet of a Maserati.

Where are we going? To the hotel of course – item number one on the itinerary, having moments before disembarked from Torino Airport, all weary and bedraggled with that dog-eared style only we British have, cases rumbling behind, feeling like everything we bought from the internet came in the wrong size.

And then what happens? Well … there’s lots of chatting on the telefonino between our hosts in their various vehicles, and a sudden U-turn. Not a literal U-turn, though many years ago I was in the back of a car driven by an Icelander that reversed down an autostrada on-ramp. How we laughed … sorry screamed. No, this is only a metaphorical U-turn. Underlined by the driver firing us down an exit ramp and into streets of those mustard-coloured houses that are all over northern Italy and presumably look better in the sunshine.

And so endeth the itinerary. An item no doubt sweated over by earnest British public relations people and rather magnificently shredded by our Italian hosts in 30 minutes.

So where are we now? We’re in the brewery of course. Menabrea. A brewery which seems to be shoehorned up a sidestreet in Biella, a small town that itself may or may not be shoehorned up the sidestreet of a large Italian city. What are we doing? Having breakfast of course. Not your normal weary traveller breakfast, but a breakfast that’s rattling past us at a fair old speed. A breakfast that Franco – nice bossman guy over there, black hair, dark blue trousers, light blue shirt, sleeves flipped back, and wearing loafers too I notice – is casually grabbing from the conveyor belt, popping the caps off and passing out with the words: “This is the freshest beer you’ll ever have.” Delivered with one of those Italian accents that makes the world swoon. There are workmen working, and a forklift in the background, under a ceiling that looks like it came from a cathedral.

If this were Britain we would have been taken out by now by a crack health and safety Swat team. Or at the very least made to wear goggles, safety boots, neon vests and forced to taste the stuff from little plastic beakers while crouched behind floor-to-ceiling Perspex 100 yards away. Actually we’d be at item number one in the itinerary: the hotel, if this was Britain. But we’re not in Britain. Thank goodness.

As it is we’re necking our beers, nodding sagely to each other and going “hmm” as it’s explained why the conveyor belts snakes up from the basement, then down from the ceiling, then into that chicane that makes Monza look dull. Something to do with the bottle tops. “When you come to our restaurant tonight,” says Franco looking at eyes that are glazing rapidly, and not only because the guy from Brewer’s Digest has asked for even more information on this technological marvel, “you will be able to taste Menabrea, unpasteurised and unfiltered. We pipe it straight in.” Bravo, we cheer. While we’re looking suitably astonished at this, Franco announces: “And now we go for lunch.” No, I’m serious. That’s exactly how it happens. And so we all pile back outside, into the cars, including the Maserati, and zoom off. This is a glorious affair of doors slamming and engines revving. But it doesn’t take very long. The restaurant’s only 200 feet away.

Lunch. Now this is fantastic. Girl comes round with the whole menu written on scrap of paper. The guy from Tennent’s – which is hosting this trip – who looks very like Ally McCoist, though that could be the beer, interprets for us all in what by now sounds like vintage Stanley Baxter.

And … oh, the lasagne. The lasagne. I have only once in my life tasted a better plate of lasagne and that was made by a lady called Maria DiBona with fresh pasta, tiny meatballs and chopped egg deep in the south. No tomato. This too has fresh pasta, not two or even three layers, but many layers of velvety softness, maybe 15, possibly 20, with just a spreading of meat and cheese, a hint, a flavour, as it should be.

Now, once upon a time press trips consisted mainly of people who wrote for newspapers. But apart from moi and the man from Brewer’s Digest – and that may well be a website – this press trip consists entirely of bloggers and appers and internet writers who all tweet and post and form opinions in an instant. And I have got to say appear a lot more sensible and sober than we used to be. How the world has changed. Well, largely changed. We still all have to be here to taste the stuff.

And taste it we will. Enthusiastically. In here, which turns out to be the little cantinetta that the workers have lunch in. Back in Turin, in a restaurant on the banks of the Po called Idrovolante, as ducks glide past and families wander through a park that is full of cars of the future on plinths in an exhibition by Italy’s spectacular car manufacturing industry. In the brewery’s restaurant later tonight, sitting beneath walls covered with graffiti from celebrities and customers and usually ending with the word “tornero”. There we’ll have horse salami (weird and sweet), handmade pastas, our choice of steaks from all over the world (Argentina, the US, even Scotland), steaks being one of those rare things that do travel well. And yes, that unpasteurised beer.

Now have I missed anything out? Maybe a little bit. I recall a chat in the Menabrea office. Tiny, piled up with awards and ancient brewing publications. There was a balcony outside, from where you could see the Alps. Or was it the Himalayas? We had had a few. There is actually – and this bit I know for a fact because I saw it – a beer tap on that office balcony. You can sit there with the brewery down below and knock one back with your friends.

Franco was saying that his pal from across the road who owns the cheesemaking place was over one evening having one of these beers from that very tap. Franco says to him: “Hey pal,” or something like that in Italian, “do you know how to make that cheese they infuse with beer?”

“No,” says his pal. “But let’s try.” And they did. Hurrah. And now their cheese is world famous. Or certainly very successful.

So we went to try Sbirro Toma Alla Birra. Back in the cars. Vroom, vroom. Up the road to Botalla. There we really did have to dress up with caps, overalls and breathing things, not least because of the smell, which would knock a fat man down at 20 paces. A nice Italian lady – she may have been a scientist – took us through the catacomb-like rooms. There men sponged and turned by hand huge disks of cheese.

I got a selection to take home and had it safely stored in the hotel fridge. Sadly despite an extensive search it was later reported that my completely delicious cheeses had completely disappeared.

The brewery? I wrote some details for you on a beermat. The main thing, and I firmly recall this, is that this brewery is the oldest in Italy. Or is it the world? No, I think it was Italy. And I think it was even older than Peroni if you take something else into account. What exactly that thing is I forget. Could it have been the oldest brewery on the same spot not called Peroni? Anyway, splendid place. Nice beer. Nice people too.

I haven’t forgotten their late-night Torino trip. Of course there was lots of grumbling in the morning about how difficult it is to get served in an Italian city-centre bar at 2am. But I didn’t hear any of that first hand. I was by then queuing up with thousands of pilgrims to see the Turin Shroud, clutching in my phone an e-ticket I had downloaded in the middle of my night from a site I had stumbled upon while trying to find out if I would be arrested for taking the 20kg of extremely fragrant fresh garlic I had somehow bought at a Turin market into Britain. But hey, that’s another story.

Ron Mackenna was a guest of Menabrea