Journey through the Land of Wine: a tale from 1938

One Saturday, a visit to my parents, and here comes my mom fishing out from the old family memories a page from a newspaper and says to me, read it, it was written by your great-uncle.
"The Resto del Carlino", dated September 1938, I read it again, 1938!

It talks about wine, it talks about Verona, Valpolicella, it speaks - in a language quite different from today’s "italic" - about history, about farmers, the history of wine when Amarone did not yet exist but only Reciotto (I didn’t misspell, that’s what it was called). It talks about a train that brought people from the San Giorgio Station to Verona, indeed talking about Reciotto. Perhaps it is because it doesn’t happen every day to find a newspaper almost 100 years old, perhaps it is also because it is antithetical to what I do (web, back then they obviously did not know what it was), perhaps because I didn’t know that my great-uncle wrote - and quite well - but I was getting emotional.
I hope this can also happen to you while reading these lines.

September 1938: A Journey Through the Land of Wine.
There are those who leave and those who come - an old drinker told us, alluding to customs that fade away; but wine never falls out of use. Bacchus is a constant god.

He said it with full conviction, while looking into the light at his glass full of beautiful ruby wine and savoring it slowly, enjoying it fully. There was something patriarchal in his figure, something highly solemn. Not short, with skin on his face that could be seen as hard and parchment-like, with calloused hands and a proud pair of mustaches, he was the perfect image of healthy good-naturedness. He confessed that he was eighty-six years old and was decisively heading toward the century. But the friend who kept him company, who made him preserve the youthful tradition of joy was still and invariably the trusty half-liter.

Strange tradition, that of wine. Since Noah did not consider it dishonorable to drink a little beyond necessity, wine has passed through the centuries as a triumphant, even having its own god in the red Bacchus. Nothing wrong with indulging in it a little.
Who has never sinned at least once with excessive fondness for the red liquor of the vine? And one could recall the story of the impertinent drinker, who excused himself to his confessor explaining that wine makes one cheerful, cheerfulness leads to good thoughts, good persons lead to good actions, and good actions lead to paradise. But, even if one does not want to descend into such a metaphysical realm, it must be recognized that for our healthy peasant race, wine is a tonic, both moral and physical of exceptional effectiveness. The farmer works all week, and the half-liter drunk in companionship on Sunday seems to him the reward for his daily toil.

In wine the worker of the fields recognizes the spirit of the earth, which he lovingly and tirelessly works, and which seems to return to him the price of his sweat, through the peace and satisfaction conferred by a good glass.

The Transvalpolicelliana

Indeed, wine is the joy of the earth. You can sense a long love and a secular benevolence within it. The earth does not forget that it is the ancient Mother, and offers to man the comforting liquor that infuses strength, security, joy. It is the joy of the earth that meets man to help him overcome the small notes of down here; it is the earth that cares for him, that rewards him for the great love and long toil.

But to better understand these things, one must come visit these lands of Verona, blessed by good God, now that the harvest fills the fields and fills the rough baskets with black, ruby, amber bunches. Verona, with regard to wine, has its history. It is from last year’s success at the National Fair of Siena by Veronese wines. And, going back twenty centuries, didn’t the famous Retic wine, so dear to Tibullus and Cicero, come from the fertile Veronese hills?

Let’s leave it be. The discerning drinker, the one who does not get drunk, because to get drunk is to profane wine, but who enjoys it while savoring the light and healthy exaltation it brings to his soul, should never neglect to take a trip through Valpolicella.

There is a nice railway that departs from San Giorgio station in Verona and, after two hours of travel, bifurcating at Affi, transports riders either to Garda or Caprino, at the foot of Monte Baldo. The line is about forty kilometers and the forty kilometers are covered in just under two hours. Nothing to be shocked about. The lovers of great speed, of ultra-dynamic electric trains, cruising at 180 per hour, should not be scandalized. In this world, everything is relative. The traveler who embarks on the Verona-Caprino-Garda line must be prepared, even before departure, to have no haste. On the other hand, running a train at a higher speed through this georgic landscape would be a profanation. In this modest manner, the idyllic tranquility of the places is respected: no one could complain, and neither would the great shadow of Virgil find anything to criticize.

The ox in the fields hardly lifts its head to greet with a low moo the familiar steamer, which, without noise and without pretensions, crosses its kingdom.

Which, for the first twenty-five kilometers, is Valpolicella, so much so that the railway earned the name of Transvalpolicelliana. A long word, which seriously puts itself alongside other famous names, like Transamericana or Transiberiana, and which, parenthetically, risks beating the record for the length of words, trying to eclipse the famous "precipitevolissimevolmente" with which Master Ludovico crafted a verse from his "Orlando".

But surely, for those who want to enjoy Valpolicella, the thirty kilometers per hour of the railway are ideal. The train, composed of a locomotive from 1890 - high chimney, four wheels, five meters long - and two or three carriages, also in the old-fashioned style, stately as old matrons and with open platforms, passes these days through a Valpolicella vibrant with activity.

Shall we get on? One after another, small towns follow: Pedemonte, Negrar, San Floriano, San Pietro Incariano, Gargagnano, Domegliara, all names of victories. There are few white houses grouped at the foot of the mountains, with a romantic bell tower and a large expanse of vineyards around. Passing by on the railway, you see the plump hills covered with reddish vineyards, from which hang beautiful bunches that bring joy to the soul just by being seen. Hills and hills, vineyards and vineyards: and the railway runs right through them. You could call it the wine line; but there is no need, because everyone knows it and willingly takes it for granted.

The Wine Itinerary

The activities are bustling in these last days of September on the hills of Valpolicella. The baskets are filling with bunches that seem the fruit of a sacred union between the earth and the sun, and along the paths roll carts full of what tomorrow will be must and in a week will become wine. In a few days, these hills will be sad. The vineyards will be covered as if by a veil of melancholy, more bare, more upright toward the sky, and the leaves will be yellow. They will seem to reproach man for having harvested the sweet fruit too soon. But tomorrow it might rain and the ripe grapes would rot. And then it’s better to pick immediately, while one can, this grace of God, this sun trapped in joyful berries.

It is from these hills that comes that tasty and delicious wine known as "Reciotto", poorly Italianized by someone to Recchiotto. Who has never tasted it at least once? It is robust and sparkling, seducing even the terrible lion who was Giosuè Carducci in matters of wine and leading him to spend long winters with his Veronese friends. But since we are here, let’s continue with this Virgilian railway to the shores of the miraculous Lake Benaco in September, up to Bardolino, sacred to Bacchus. Who does not know Bardolino wine? Perhaps it is the best in the entire Veronese area: full, clear, sparkling, less sweet but more flavorful than Albana, more complete than Chianti, more tasty than Lambrusco. Perhaps it is this wine that earned Betteloni, the sweet poet who sang the lake from Bardolino, the admiration of Giosuè Carducci, who often used oenological criteria in his judgments. Perhaps it is with this wine that Catullus, sick and unhappy, sought to forget in nearby Sirmione the betrayal of Lesbia.

And so, now that the first autumn winds make the shining surface of the lake shiver and force the last vacationers of Benaco to flee, the harvest begins in the lush vineyards of Bardolino.

In fifteen days the wine will be ready and will start to leave for Verona, from where it will be sent to various Italian and foreign centers. There is a great demand for Bardolino these days, and the producers do not know how to satisfy everyone. Orders come from Venice, from Milan, from Rome, which does not content itself with its Castelli, from Romagna which for Bardolino betrays Albana, from Munich, from Geneva, from St. Gallen, from places where they are devoted to beer and some cases of bottles, well sealed and brightly labeled, even depart for America.

Sweet September on the hills of Bardolino, when the lake shimmers at the gentle caress of the first autumn winds, when one has around them the strange sensation of a dream country, a country built by fantasy outside daily concerns, a refuge of the mind in the idyll of laurel and olive trees, in the enchantment of sunsets and air, upon which rests an indefinable veil of bluish vapor!
Then the hills become populated with harvest workers, and in the inhabited areas passes the sweet and slightly pungent aroma of fermenting must.

But one shouldn’t think that with Valpolicella and Bardolino the wine itinerary ends. One should venture down to the area under Peschiera, called Lugana, the ancient Lucanian forest that produces a sweet and exquisite white wine. One should take a trip to Soave, still stern in its walls and Scaliger castle, and taste that strong and robust red wine, and the sparkling and slightly acidic white that is named "Torbolino" for its characteristic color that does not allow transparency. But one would risk returning home with shining eyes, which is not permitted.
Vittorio G. Paltrinieri