Redi (time-warp backwards)

Our last day in Assisi was the longest and fullest of our short two weeks there. The night before we had had our last lab and final dinner, for which we cooked a medieval smorgasbord of roast pork and meat pies, garlic torte, herbed bread, and savory cookies to dip in spiced wine for dessert. After dinner, we went out to a candle-lit courtyard for a performance from the medieval reenactors of Assisi- reenactors who usually performed for saint’s day festivals, Christmas, and Easter within the city. First, there was the “court”, a king and queen (who had lead our fieldtrip the week before) who danced with their courtiers before being seated to watch the flag wavers. The flag wavers were much more skilled than their titles suggest, running and swinging their flags in elaborate patterns, sometimes juggling them to each other, dropping them onto their feet and the flicking them up again in high arches. Two of the flag wavers were small boys, perhaps 10 and 12 years old, but just as skilled and synchronized as the rest of their grown-up team. All of this was accompanied by a drum line pounding out a deep, heart-shaking beat. After the flag wavers, we were lead back inside to sit cross-legged on the floor around the medieval band and choir, who told the roughly-translated stories behind their songs as they sung them: they were a pagan group who sung about love and wine and the seasons, and usually traveled around performing for festivals and wedding parties. Their songs were lively, at times even rowdy, and accompanied by the lute, rebec (something like a small cello), recorders, harp, and a hammered dulcimer. It was beautiful and jubilant music, and we clapped and sung along like small children from our places on the floor. I felt like dancing and singing for hours afterwards, even when we had returned to our hotel- I had to force myself to go to bed much earlier than I wanted to, so I would be able to get up for our field trip to Tuscany in the morning.

Our fieldtrip began at 8AM, with a sleepy two-hour bus ride to Multipulciano, a region just over the boarder of Tuscany. The city of Multipulciano is, like most cities in central Italy, built on the very top of a hill, surrounded by sturdy walls with four or five large gates. Large buses are not allowed within the walls, as they could not fit down many of the streets anyway, so we are dropped off at the bottom of the hill to walk. We walked through the main street of the town, past a hundred little shops selling Tuscan wines and leather shoes, dried pasta and olive oil, until we got to Cantina del Redi. The entrance to the wine cellars looked normal enough, blending in as just another door along the street, but just inside the entrance stairs lead down far below the average townhouse basement. This is one of the oldest established wine cellars in Italy: although the main cellar was built in the 16th century, it is connected to an Etruscan tomb. The cellar has been used continuously since it was built, and has always produced respected wines. We tasted three wines, each accompanied by a tidbit of the regional cuisine: a slice of soft, sweet salame, a piece of sheep’s cheese, or a slice of bread toasted with olive oil. The first wine was a 2008, simple rosso- a cheaper table wine, blended from two different grapes. The second was a 2007, more expensive, Vino Nobile that you could buy now and leave in your cellar for 5 or 10 years, and have something worth five times the €12 you paid for it. The last was a 2005, special reserve, made from Briareo grapes hand-picked at their prime. You could definitely tell the difference in age, mostly by the absence of the tannic bite in the older wine, but also by the caramelly, smooth sweetness of the aftertaste. I wanted to buy the oldest, but the €20 price tag dissuaded me. I convinced myself that just a taste was enough, and that someday I would have a wine cellar, buy young wines cheap and coax them into such a delicious state on my own, then pull them out for special dinner parties. By then, maybe I would even be making my own sheep cheese and salame as well…