D: Are
you a discerning drinker, an expert or simply an enthusiast?
R: No-one ever taught me how to enjoy wine, or how to
recognise its various flavours and notes. So I would say I am
an occasional drinker, a simple enthusiast. Usually my stomach
– which is rather delicate – is the best judge:
if I drink poor quality wine, I am ill straight away.
D: What feelings or emotions do
you associate with wine?
R: Convivial, carefree moments. Wine reminds me of a
period of my adolescence when I used to go to Calamandrana,
a town near my home where the Barbera e Blues festival was held.
The first times I went out at night, my first parties with friends,
freedom.
D: Can you remember a particularly
enjoyable toast?
R: When I was little, about five or six, I used to spend
New Year with my grandparents in Nizza Monferrato. On New Year’s
morning my grandfather would wake me up and we would toast with
spumante. It was unexpected, I didn’t really understand
why we were celebrating.
D: How would you define wine?
R: In a technical way, like “a drink obtained from
pressing and fermenting grapes”. But for people from Canelli,
the land of Moscato, wine is practically everything. Even as
children we were used to the concept of an economy and a society
based on this product, so my answer is different to what a Milanese
might say. If you take someone from a big city a bottle of wine,
they are unbelievably happy. Whereas for us it’s normal,
in fact perhaps we have even lost a little of the sense of its
value.
D: Do you ever think about the
long journey that begins in the vineyard and ends up with a
bottle on the table?
R: Of course. For a while I worked in the enological
machinery sector and I knew the procedures and sensations surrounding
wine. This too is part of our education, the baggage of knowledge
belonging to those born in wine country. I remember that at
elementary school we were already studying the wine harvest
and we did so in a different way to city children. We just had
to cross the road to see a farmer’s vines, or visit large
wineries. And it’s also just something that’s in
the air. Every year after the harvest, a strong aroma of must
permeates the streets of Canelli. In your latest book, Cronache
da chissà dove, you describe the hillside landscape with
its inhabitants. |
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D: Why
do you sometimes clash with the country mentality?
R: When I was twenty, as a reaction, I became very critical
of the country world. I only saw the worst side, I was irritated
by country rhetoric and the continual complaints. Today I have
pretty much changed my mind. I am starting to realise that never
bragging, and complaining in order to conceal the fact that
things are going well, are inevitable attitudes that these people
have in their blood. In the end they are the ones who preserve
our cultural heritage. So recently my relationship with this
mentality is more relaxed, I am happy to live in the country.
D: Do you feel you have inherited
something from this culture?
R: My family is not a farming family, so I don’t
feel particularly close to this culture. But I think I have
the same character as these people, I am a bit reserved, like
true Piedmontese are. When I come up against people from other
places I feel I am a product of my native land. But perhaps
I should live away from it for a while in order to understand
how strong the link is. I haven’t thought about it much
so far.
D: Writing and wine, or inspiration,
creativity and wine. Is there some connection between them?
R: Many writers and poets, from Bukowski to Hemingway,
to Steinbeck, Baudelaire and Verlaine, exalt wine as a fuel
for creativity. I believe that more than anything else it helps
you think, it makes the mind run faster, leaping over some of
the links between cause and effect that we usually work through.
If a person is lucky enough to be able to remember, organise
and hold onto them, those thoughts can be highly interesting.
But when I write I need to have a clear head.
D: Have you ever written about
wine?
R: There’s a page in a piece of work that hasn’t
come out yet, in which I talk about what seems to have become
the main pastime of thirty-year olds: dinner as the last frontier
of entertainment. I don’t know whether it was the same
a few years ago but now the main point of an evening with friends
is dinner. You spend all day getting ready to eat out and once
dinner is over, so is the evening. I also describe that habit
of lingering over the choice of wine that has become a ritual
attitude and makes me smile. Even those like me who know next
to nothing about wine try to figure out the wine list, looking
at the vintages and judging the prices and names – and
then making a choice that is basically a shot in the dark.
D: But honestly, do you like wine?
R: Yes, I always like a glass of wine but hardly ever
outside meals. It arouses pleasant sensations in me which involve
all the senses. Some dishes absolutely require a good glass
of wine as an accompaniment. Since I learned to appreciate good
wine I have wondered why mediocre wine is made. Couldn’t
people be taught the merits of good wine? |
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