Giovanni Dri, Il Roncat

“My grandfather, and my father, both made wine. But they were also soldiers in the war. My father told me not to make wine. It was too much work everyday all the time. But, unfortunately, he died young, and so he could not influence me. Now my daughter has decided also to make wine, so that is four generations.

“I was born on a farm just over this hillside. The elementary school was up at the top of the village on the mountain [where we ate lunch yesterday, the view in the first photo of yesterday’s post]. In one of the rooms of the school there were the five elementary school classes all in one room with one teacher. So they were not spending as much money on school as they do now. Now they have buses that drive you. But I would have to walk all the way there up the mountain. It would take me 30 minutes to get there. I would walk through the vineyards. In the middle of winter when I was coming home from school, and I was hungry, I would stop in the vineyards and pick the grape bunches they had forgotten.

“But why would I be talking about December? Because the snow would start to fall and I would eat these grape bunches that were left behind, and they would be cold, sweet raisins and juice. And recently I started to think, why can’t we make wine out of these bunches? And so I named one of my wines, Uve Decemberine Ramandolo (The grapes of December). The fruit all comes from Verduzzo in the first week of December.”

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I arrive back in Arizona later tonight. We saw so many things in Colli Orientali, there will be more posts on our trip still to come.

Be safe! Cheers!