The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran Read Free Book Online

criminally insane.
    I rang the doorbell and “Brindisi” from La Traviata chimed out over the barking of hounds. Dino opened the door, his face aglow with good cheer. I handed him the bottle of Chianti Riserva we had paid far too much for at our local enoteca . He examined the bottle and concluded that it was of sufficient vintage to merit an appreciative nod, although being store bought, it could never compete with the homemade Chianti he had just decanted for the occasion.
    He welcomed us in and as he helped Nancy off with her coat, he asked her about her fungus. I thought this was a rather intimate line of questioning but I soon realized that he was referring to a disease that was attacking our olive trees up at the piccolo rustico .
    We pretended that we knew about it and casually asked him what he would do. He told us that we should immediately hire his cousin Faustino, who was renowned throughout Tuscany as a mighty warrior against the funghi . We were in luck because cousin Faustino was coming for dinner and Dino would arrange for him to help us.
    We thanked him for his kindness, and he looked at us in shock that it should be any other way. After all, we were famiglia . Dino expressed himself with such sincerity that we almost forgot he was constantly hustling us.
    We followed Dino down a narrow stairway, unable to tell where the baying frenzy of the dogs ended and the overheated babble of human voices began. As we descended the stairs, the scent of fermenting grapes grew so intense, it smelled as if this part of the house had been marinating in red wine for centuries. We were entering the cantina, the heart and soul of every Tuscan home. And to dismiss this as an Italian version of the American den, the English drawing room, or the French parlor is to miss a vital facet of its character.
    Every Tuscan home, no matter how humble, is guaranteed two things by law: a forno for baking bread and a cantina where the family can make wine. No one is guaranteed a bathroom, but every citizen must have their pane e vino . For that reason, it was usually the first room built, and many houses in this part of Tuscany were literally constructed around it.
    As modern life encroached and winemaking evolved into more of a hobby, albeit a deadly serious one, the cantina was used less for its original purpose and more as a place for social gatherings. Because the cantina is subterranean, it’s the coolest place in the house, so in addition to be being an all-purpose party room, it’s also used for the storage of food. Along with racks of hundreds of dusty wine bottles, every shelf, tabletop, and nook in Dino’s cantina was stocked with glass jars of red peppers, marble-white chunks of mozzarella, silvery anchovies, and olives in every shade between green and black, all preserved in olive oil as golden as Mediterranean sunshine. The net effect of all this stored food and wine was to give one the feeling of being at a party held inside a large pantry.
    Dino’s cantina was dominated by an aircraft-carrier-sized banquet table and an authentic pietra serena fireplace large enough to spit-roast a baby elephant. A dozen people lounging on rickety pine furniture were gathered around the stufa , a cast-iron potbellied stove. The guests were drinking wine and munching on bruschetta. Their shrill voices, as well as the scratchy accordion music playing on a phonograph, were harshly amplified by the low ceiling and the lack of either curtains or carpets for muffling.
    â€œAscolta, tutti, ascolta, eccoli Americani,” Dino said, announcing our entrance as if we had personally liberated their village from the Germans.
    Everyone stopped talking and turned to us in a moment of rare silence for a roomful of Italians.
    â€œBenvenuti nella nostra casa.” A stout woman in a batik muumuu greeted us with kisses that felt wet on our cheeks.
    â€œThis is my wife, Flavia,” Dino said.
    Flavia was an energetic lady who, had