We were sitting on the plastic chairs in the little club, when Mario asked the question that triggered the unthinkable succession of events that led us, in the short space of a few hours, to flee Montalcino with two vans full of grape.
To be perfectly honest, we were all drinking beer or Campari for aperitifs that afternoon. Myself, Tommaso, Mario, Michael and Olmo, the all-round bartender at the club. The question came with the necessary innocence that is the prelude to the conception of a criminal plan.
“Eh Tommà,’ said Mario, turning to the one among us who had the most experience of grape harvests, ‘this morning I passed by Montalcino with the van, and I saw something that … but all those bunches they threw on the ground there in the vineyards? What was wrong with them? Weren’t they good?”.
Tommaso, who had a degree in oenology and several grape harvests – from Argentina to New Zealand – behind him, settled back in his chair and gave the answer that, he imagined, would best satisfy Mario’s curiosity, who had always harvested between San Giovanni delle Contee, Castell’Azzara and Proceno.
“They throw it away because if you make good wine, you have to throw some grapes away”.
“I understand, but it’s a waste”.
“But if you make bottles that you then sell for thirty euro each, you have to do this”.
Mario, after adjusting his glasses, insisted.
“But at least make wine for the house, I say. The one to drink every day … with friends”.
You know those glasses with thick lenses made especially for a good face? Those are Mario’s glasses and his face, good, is, like the character of a man in his fifties who plays the cymbals in the village band.
I don’t know if at that point Tommaso was tired of explaining how things were or just wanted to make an unpretentious joke, the fact is that he said.
“Oh, if you want to take it, let’s make a vanload tonight and go get it”.
It was the seed sown in the fertile soil of that late summer afternoon that would be followed by an evening with no commitments for any of us. We would probably meet again in those same chairs after dinner, still chatting about wine, hunting and the start of the football season. The idea of taking the van to pick those grapes in Montalcino, however, was still not sufficiently tempting to really move us. So I thought it was time to give that hypothesis the revanchist charm of stealing from the rich to give to the poor.
‘Which then if you think about it,’ I said, ‘in Montalcino 40 years ago they were exactly like us. I mean that the land, even there, cost nothing. They made wine, little and white, and they drank it themselves. Then the Americans arrived and today everyone in Montalcino is made of gold’.
Tommaso, who knew this story well, nodded and Olmo, to whom I had told it many times, nodded with him. But Michael and Mario, who did not know it, became curious, so I continued, leaning back in my chair right towards them.
‘Imagine there was this family of Italian-American merchants who sold millions of bottles of Italian wine in the United States. Oh! But millions I say! In 1980 they were selling stuff like 10 million cases, which in America a case means 12 bottles. 120 million bottles! And it was all Lambrusco they were buying in Emilia Romagna. Then one fine day they said to the guy who was making this wine here in Italy: ‘Here, this is 100 million dollars – I put a figure on it, but without straying too far from the truth – see if you can find a piece of land to buy to put the vines on, lots of vines, and make a cellar to produce all the wine we need to sell here. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of selling, but you … you have to find land that costs little and produces well, because we’re tired of selling other people’s wine. Now let’s start selling ours’.
I paused for two seconds to drink and make sure I had the attention of the audience, then resumed.
“That guy, who is now a gentleman that everyone in Montalcino carries in the palm of their hand, was younger than me at the time and imagine what it must have been like to have the responsibility of investing all that money. But he was a smart guy and so he took the car and drove around Tuscany looking for a suitable place. He passed Florence, then Siena, skipped Chianti, which was no good because too many people were already investing in it, and Val d’Orcia, where land was already too expensive. He arrived in Montalcino and saw that a hectare of land cost 3 million lire and little more. So he stopped and decided that he would invest the Mariani money there. Fuck! If he had driven a few more kilometres and arrived here, we would all be rich now! Do you know how much a hectare of vineyard costs in Montalcino today?”
Silence.
‘Here, if you have a few half million euros in your pocket we’ll sit down to negotiate, otherwise nisba’.
At this point I had already sufficiently watered Tommaso’s seed and there was only room for imaginative comments on what might have happened if the good Rivella had arrived in the Sorano area with his car loaded with dollars and riches for all. Unjust fate soon called our sense of justice to the rescue.
“What if we really went there to get those grapes?”.
“And when?”
“Tonight! Otherwise it’ll be late and they’ll all go rotten.”
“But it will be rotten already!”
“What does it matter! It was even chilly today, so I think it’s still good, and I’m sorry, but if they make thirty euro a bottle of wine from those grapes, even if it stays there for half a day it’ll cost fifteen euro a bottle!
“Right! So we’ll see how good this Brunello is.
“But if we get caught, there’ll be hell to pay.
“Fuck what? They’ll throw it away anyway!”
“And then what will we do with it?”.
“We’ll make wine. We’ll make Brunello di San Giovanni del Contee,” Mario closed.
We made an appointment for after dinner with the idea that as soon as Olmo had closed the club we would set off on our mission. To this end we loaded five baskets and several bigons onto two vans, Michael’s and Tommaso’s.
Dinner at my aunt’s passed quickly and when we had finished clearing the table we ran back to the club. As we took our coffee killers we looked like conspirators and, without saying anything to anyone, we secretly toasted to the folly of our enterprise. The most gloating was Mario, who smiled behind those glasses and offered drinks over and over again. For a moment I thought that the most serious obstacle to the success of our enterprise, more than some vineyard owner’s leveled rifle, might have been a freaking breathalyser.
At 11.15 p.m., given the absence of other patrons, Olmo announces the closing time and we decide to leave (not without first making a last good-luck toast). At that point, maintaining a reasonable cruising speed, we consider reaching Montalcino around midnight: the time of the crime. The right time for our revenge.
On the first van climb Olmo, Michael and Mario, all three in an obvious state of euphoria and excited at the idea of going to get back even a small part of what could have been ours. Tommaso and I get into the second van.
“Of course you too with these crappy ideas … you’re such an asshole!”. The great thing about Tommaso is that he’s never been in the habit of going around things.
“Come on Tommà! You were the first to set us all off with the story of the good Montalcino wine.
“I understand, but I’m not stupid like you who then start making such a big poem about a story? And then you know that if we get caught it’s a mess! A lot of people in Montalcino are still peasants like us and if you touch their grapes it’s worse than if you fuck their wives”.
“Don’t worry! No one wants to fuck anyone’s wife! Tonight we simply go and take what they throw away. Then we make us a shit wine, but that will be worth more to us than gold … but then think of all the shit wine that gets passed on at absurd prices just because they stick a good story on it! This, to say the least, would be a beautiful story to tell and I say that net of the violation of private property, those bottles, with the right label, I could even sell them back to Pinchiorri’.
“You’re all dumb! You get too much smog in Florence, then you come here, breathe the good air, and your head falls off!”
We laugh and as we pass between the Amiata and the fortress of Radicofani, which stands out like the impregnable eagle’s nest it was in the days of Ghino di Tacco, I think that maybe Tommaso is right. Maybe.
“Perhaps, that it is as you say. Yet I really do think that fate has been very bad to us and that if we don’t come up with something crazy, sooner or later our villages will empty out and all we have to do is go and steal the grapes they throw away in Montalcino. There will be no one left in our parts even to look after the vines that have been here for a lifetime and maybe two’.
I know I’m touching him on a sensitive point, especially since he has invested money, time and passion in trying to set up new vineyards to make good wine, as he says, right between San Giovanni and Castell’Azzara.
We enter the Val d’Orcia. Tommaso turns to look at me.
“Alright, but make it quick.”
I turn up the volume on the radio and start singing a demented little song, all cheerful. Tommaso looks at me, shakes his head, but after a while he starts humming along with me.
We park the vans hidden behind a clump of trees. We are at the point where the Cassia turns off, before the Torrenieri crossroads, to start climbing towards Montalcino, and already the first vineyards of renowned wineries are taking root in the white, clayey soil, which as far as we know is not exactly the most suitable for vines, and Mario does not fail to point this out in his own way.
“But do they really make wine here for trenteuro a bottle?”
I smile and I’d already be ready to tell the story of the scores, the wine critics and the loads of bullshit that goes with them. And I’m already there about to leave when.
“Shhhhhh,’ Tommaso bursts in, ‘let’s start collecting and make a little mess, because if we get caught, there’ll be hell to pay.
As if he hadn’t said it. Olmo and Michael set off like two comrades to pick up and chat, Mario dangles behind them, in the dark, like a dark dancer between the rows, and I imagine him smiling even though I can’t see him. Every now and then, the bang of a distant cannon, the kind used to chase away the beasts that are no longer paying attention, intertwines with our chatter. I am happy that I want to sing again, while Thomas starts picking those grapes at breakneck speed, always shaking his head.
The work proceeds serenely. Look at that beautiful night harvest! – I think to myself – it’s the envy of Donnafugata! Every now and then a few cars pass by, headlights shining through the rows, but no one pays any attention to us or our vans. Or so it seems.
“Can you imagine if a hectare of land in San Giovanni cost a million euros?’.
Michael still doesn’t get it.
“Ah nothing! I’d sell it all and open a bar in the Canary Islands.” Olmo replies to him.
“I would live on my grandmother’s farm and feed four families.
“But you’d also have to consider your brother.”
“You mean for the inheritance?”
“No, to make him drink! You’d have to make a lot of wine, he’d drink a few quintals himself and you’d drink the rest. In my opinion you’d go bankrupt!”.
Laughter! And we laugh loudly under that half-moon that looks at us complicitly.
I think I’d make my own nice little company, I’d put half my family and at least a dozen friends to work there as consultants. A few bottles, all numbered … and fuck! A car of the carabinieri! I can distinguish it by the flashing light, fortunately switched off, on the roof. It goes slowly down the bends before the little clearing where we’ve parked. I decide to risk it and head straight for the vans, taking Michael with me and just saying. “Hold my side – then I raise the tone of my voice – the rest of you stay here, latch on tight and don’t move”.
I wish I could say how clever we were at fooling the carabinieri, but I’d be lying. And to say that I was already ready to perform in a premiere performance at La Scala, boasting of influential acquaintances and friendships from Montalcino to the Regional Council of Tuscany, to shamelessly reaching the highest ranks of the army.
However, we were quick to uncover the bonnets of the vans and pull out the ignition cables. The carabinieri simply pulled up, saw our pretty, clean faces and immediately realised that the maximum crime we could be committing was pissing under the stars.
“Good evening! The van has stopped,” I said, nodding towards Michael, “and we’re trying to get it started again.
“Do you have the papers?”.
“Of course! Shall I go and get them?”
I make to move, but the carabiniere speaking to me from the lowered window presses me.
“Where are you from?”
“From San Giovanni delle Contee.”
“Where from?”
“It’s a village down towards Sorano”.
“Come on! How beautiful Sorano is – says the one behind the wheel – I’ve been wanting to go back there for ages!”.
“We’d like to go back there tonight, if only this wreck would go away.
Michael intervened, turning to me.
“You’ll see, now it’s leaving, don’t worry.
The carabinieri take a good look at us. They didn’t quite buy it, but they still imagine that no, we don’t look like criminals.
“So we come down here to put petrol in – and I think of the petrol station on the Cassia a few kilometres from there – then we come back, if the van hasn’t started yet, we’ll see if we can get it going again together.
We take the hint and say thank you. They drive off again. We wait until they disappear from sight and don’t have time to call the others back when Thomas hisses.
“You dickheads! Get a move on, or there’ll be hell to pay!
We load all the chariots, even the half-empty ones. Adrenalin makes us run like mad and in a few minutes we are already on board. We set off again more excited than worried. Of the journey home I only remember the joy. The dull joy of something crazy and yet so intimately right. The small karmic bump to bring the scales of asshole fate back to weigh on us even one gram less.
The rest is a story of spontaneous fermentations, hand pumping over and malolactic fermentations that don’t want to know, but these are details. The story is the one you have just read.
The true story of the time we made Brunello di Montalcino at San Giovanni delle Contee.
tommasociuffoletti 