Wine, whiskey and knowledge

Franca and Peppe have promised to take me porcini hunting as soon as the funghi ‘nascono’ (literally: are born) after the rains. Looking out my window onto the the main street in the village (steep and cobbled, no cars), I see Anna Rosa and Ebe carrying baskets full of plump multicoloured funghi. It’s time to visit Franca and Peppe to beg a place on their next foray into the chestnut woods. It’s 6.15 pm when I ring the doorbell, apprehensive that I might be interrupting dinner preparations, but Franca welcomes me with a beaming smile and makes space at the kitchen table — already crowded with her husband Peppe, their married son Marco, and Carlo, a builder friend and work colleague of Peppe’s. Having assured me that they’ll let me know about future porcini hunts (and the chestnut harvest, except that the chestnuts have only just started to drop, so it won’t be this week). Franca extracts a bottle of limoncello from the cupboard… Carlo turns it down (which I would have thought impolite) and out comes a bottle of single malt whiskey instead, which I happily accept as well, complimenting them on their well-stocked liquor cabinet. I wish I’d had time to ask how they’d got it, but Carlo is already saying that what he really likes is a good grappa, like the one he has from Friuli, north of Venice, with the scent of the grapes still in it. If this is a hint, it doesn’t send Franca back to the cupboard, and Carlo shifts to the wine of Friuli, which he also admires. Chianti is good too, he says, a real Chianti of course, not the ones that just say ‘Chianti’ on the label. Had we heard about the tanker they filled with water and sugar in Sicily? By the time it reached Milan, it had fermented. All the wine ‘manufacturers’ had to do was to add some red colouring and bottle it. They make a hefty profit, he claims, selling it at just €1,50 a litre. But if you know what goes into producing a good wine, you’ll know not to trust such a cheap bottle. Your neighbours’ wine is in a totally different category; you have firsthand evidence of it. Carlo thinks this year should be an excellent vintage here in Casabasciana. He tasted Giuliano’s grapes as he was passing last week with the newly harvested bunches. They were good and sweet after the hot, dry summer, but it remained to be seen whether the alcohol content would be 13% like last year’s or drop down to the 12% of 2007. I hope I’m invited to taste it, even though it will probably taste rough to me. The important thing that applies equally to fine wines and little local wines is that knowledge of the producer is what counts. It’s what keeps you from being made a fool of, and guarantees you get a genuine product.