A miserable day: grey, grizzling, drizzly — October going on February. Our host had reluctantly given up the crazy idea of lunch in the garden; the first guests helped him move the tables and chairs inside. It may have been an attempt to warm ourselves against winter, but the talk turned to Italy, further stimulated by someone spotting a copy of David Gilmour’s In Pursuit of Italy. In the event of your not having devoured it already, a treat awaits you.
We agreed there is a basic distinction in the way that one thinks about Italy, and about France. Although there are vast differences between the French regions, there is an ultimate unity; there lives the dearest Frenchness deep down things. There is a France profonde. But Italy remains as Bismarck described it: a geographical expression. The convulsions from 1789 onwards created a French national identity; the Risorgimento did not unify Italy. Giulio Andreotti, that silken, suave, sophisticated… operator, who had seven stints as prime minister, was once asked whether he feared a coup d’état. ‘That could not happen,’ he replied. ‘There is no état.’ But there was a long coup d’état in the mid-19th century. The winners called it the Risorgimento.
Douceur de vie, dolce vita: why do we not have such a phrase in -English? ‘The good life’ cannot convey the same gracious sensuality. Apropos of grace, the lunch-table agreed that no human beings have more of it than northern Italians (I suggested Afrikaners and Ulster Prods, but found no seconder).
I reminisced about the days when you could buy a litre of grappa for 500 lire. That was not a gracious drink. But it was preferable to some of the modern boutique girlie-man grappas, which taste of aftershave. Many decades ago, I was in a bar in Turin when some chaps in blue overalls arrived. Their shift had ended and they wanted grappa, in quantity. I was pressed to join them. They asked me what was the British equivalent of grappa. I said whisky. ‘No, no: that’s for special occasions. What do you pour down your gullet every day, like us now?’ In my best broken Italian, I tried to explain about the English tax system, which made grappa almost as expensive as Scotch. Half of them did not believe me. The other half thought that the English were mad, and should not be allowed to join the EC (this was before we had). Another couple of grappas, and we could have started the Torino branch of Ukip.
In England, 40 years on, we had a debate about prosecco. Excellent in a Bellini, was the consensus, but could it ever be worth drinking on its own? In general, no, but I had brought a couple of bottles of San Lio from Waitrose which found the favour they deserved — and we were drinking them after Polly Roger, a stern test. That prosecco did not taste like an inferior substitute; it was a different drink. This was the sort of prosecco which Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti would enjoy.
The afternoon expanded into Barbera d’Alba from the North and Salice Salentino from the South, which both stood up to the delicious game stew. Our host said that he had been emptying his freezer. Some wetties started worrying about the antiquity of the contents, but there was plenty of Marc de Bourgogne to finish off, some hours later, and no one has died. But before the grappa, there was a hideous embarrassment. The host fetched ‘a different red’. I gave it a sniff, enticing: a sip, sensational: a scrutiny of the label: what to say? The owner asked if it was still OK; it was an odd bottle that had been knocking around. I explained about the super-Tuscans and rationed the bottle, to give -everyone a taste, which everyone enjoyed, as they should have. I would put it on a par with a good super-second and as it was a ’76 Sassicaia, that is not surprising. Before this column reaches the news-stands, I must tell my friend just what a special bottle had been knocking around, and to check his cellar for others.
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