In the early evenings of that grape harvest we watched
Zio Silvio's tractor pull the trailer with the grape trough up towards the
house. The large tractor treads clawed their way carefully up the hill and
around the hairpin curve. Out of our
sight, the tractor turned into our road.
We could hear the back and forth and then feel the thrum of the engine
and the vibration of the tracks as it approached Zio Mario's house, located between Zio
Silvio's and Zio Remo's. Even though he lived in Torino, Zio Mario maintained his
property at Gabi, and he had built at the side of his house the large vat where
the majority of the grapes would be fermented. Each day the tractor stopped
there to unload.
On the last day I was surprised when the tractor and
trailer rumbled past the uncles' houses and on towards ours. Carrying Margaret
Ann, I rushed out onto the front balcony, and we looked down into mounds of
purple fruit as the trailer passed below us. Zio Silvio drove the tractor,
while George and the others waved as they sprawled, dusty and tired, beside the
trough on the flatbed trailer. The windows in our home vibrated when they
rounded the corners of the house, and I hurried to the kitchen balcony so we
could watch them pull into the courtyard.
Down below, Matthew was running in place outside our
door, eager to dash out to the tractor, but restrained by his grandfather's
hand. The uncles laughed and waved as they stopped, and Matthew was finally
freed to run into George's arms. George climbed down off the trailer and carried
him to stand with Paul and James in the safety of the balcony overhang. There
they watched the men unload some of the grapes into our cantina. The cantina
looked like a dark, sunken storage area, except that it contained three large
barrels, and the musty smell that clung to the stone walls betrayed many years
of fermenting and storing wine. The men poured some of the grapes into our cantina, where they would be held until the big grape-crush, and then they drove
back around the corner to unload the rest at Zio Mario’s house. George’s labor
had earned us a few grapes of our own to turn into wine.
The grape crushing wasn't exactly an "I Love Lucy"
episode, but it wasn't far off. The grapes had to be squeezed to release the
juice and pulp. Without fancy equipment, the easiest way to do that was with
human power. I opened the balcony door to hang my laundry the next morning, and
I heard a lot of voices and laughter in the courtyard below. Zio Remo, Zio
Silvio, and my in-laws and the children were gathered around the cantina. I
hung the wet clothes quickly and ran downstairs to see what was happening.
By the time I arrived, Zio Remo was standing in a
tub of grapes, stomping up and down in rubber boots. They looked exactly like
the boots that Zio Silvio used to muck out the barn, but I was relieved to hear
that these were reserved for grape-crushing only. Before and after he used them
they were scrupulously cleaned. He looked a little embarrassed as we all stood
around to watch him march up and down in the barrel, sinking and rising in the
purple fruit. After a little while Zio
Silvio took a turn with his grape-crushing boots. As they moved in and out of the barrel they
were very careful not to let the boots touch any surface that would contaminate
them. Although they made jokes about taking the place of barefoot young women,
and invited us all to join them, they were in deadly earnest. If the grapes
were not crushed, they would not ferment properly. When they finished our few
grapes, they moved on to the much bigger tank at Zio Mario's house. It was
large enough to hold both men, and the job was much more difficult. We soon
tired of watching the uncles tromping around, and we left them to it.
A few days later we could smell a strong pungent odor
coming from our cantina, strong enough to mask the gamey smells of the barn. The grapes
were in the first fermenting stage, a by-product of which was CO2. The door of the cantina had been propped open
so that the gases could escape, and the sweet, musty smell of rotting grapes
wafted around the courtyard and into our rooms.
The twins were too young to venture outdoors alone, but we told Paul and
James not to go near the cantina because the gas was dangerous. We needn’t have
worried. The strong smell kept them at bay. After about a week of the first
chemical reaction, the mixture was then put through a special wooden barrel
that strained out the stems, pits and skins, so the real fermenting could
begin. Several months later, the wine would be transferred from the barrels
into bottles and, shortly after that, we could expect to see it on our table.
It was simple wine, so there was no point in aging it for too long. Paul and
James raced eagerly to watch each step. It was exciting for all of us to see
the process from vineyard to dining room.
George was grateful he wasn’t asked to participate in
the grape stomping. He was already aching from exercising rarely-used muscles
as he had bent and stretched and lifted while picking the grapes. He was thankful
the vendemmia was over and grateful
that the family only had one vineyard! George’s take on the grape picking was a
reality check for me. I wanted to romanticize our experience on the farm. Even
though the house we lived in was crumbling, the bathroom inadequate, and things
that we previously had taken for granted were a struggle, I still clung to my
romantic vision of our return to the land. I really, really wanted us to succeed. I wanted to reconnect with nature, to
get in touch with my humanity. I wanted to be freed forever from the modern
quicksand of cynicism and materialism. And I was determined to show my in-laws that
their skepticism of my ability to assimilate into the culture around the farm
was unfounded.
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| The cantina door at right angles to our house |
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| The cantina doorway with barrels for wine |
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| One of the barrels inscribed with 1860 |
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