Barolo
In Barolo, a tiny village in Piedmont where the "king of wines" is made, I met with my friend Daniele. When I entered the village bar an elderly lady asked me: "Where do you come from?"
"From Florence. Have you ever been to Florence?", I replied.
"No, I am now seventy nine years old, and I have never been to Florence. I have never been to Rome. I have never been to Milan. Why should I ever go there? The inhabitants of Florence, Rome and Milan, they all of them come here to see us here." Laughter rang round the bar.
A sprightly sixty-year-old man who claimed never to have worked in his life told us the sad story of a family of very hard-working wine-growers in Barolo. There were three of them, two brothers and a sister. They made excellent wine in the traditional fashion. But all three committed suicide, all three in the same way. They threw themselves into the fermenting tank and drowned. In 1954, 1982 and 1992.
* * *
Daniele and I left the bar and went to see Signor Mascarello, who designed and wrote the labels for his own Barolo. As we came in, he was writing on a label:
Il ne faut pas faire des barriques mais des barricades. Robespierre.
