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| Teresa (Scalora) Borgia and grandson Andrea Farru with picture of her parents in 1921 |
Looking back over the days and years, I find myself mystified by what Sicilian wine means to me. I go back to 1981, in the business sense, when there were inexpensive wines like Bonifato in 1.5 liter bottles that we sold to restaurants for $2, and 1 liter flip-top bottles of Segesta that we also sold for ridiculously low prices. The wines were cheap and fresh and even though they were made in an industrial manner, back in those days industrial was a little less involved. There was no need for chapitalization, not in Sunny Sicily. Perhaps acidification. Most likely to cover rushed winemaking. Oak? At those prices it was 100% concrete. Which is now raging back into fashion. No, what we got, at that level, was a wine with a short shelf life, but a wine that was straightforward, basic, and serviceable. No epiphanies, but wine as they drank everyday in Sicily.
I never made to the Antica Focacceria S. Francesco this time (interesting story about the place, here). Our itinerary was complete. But I heard wonderful jazz floating out the windows on a late night back from an evening out, and I saw a wine bar that I’d like to try (word to Anthony: this might be a place to check out when you are there).
If pressed I would gladly reach for a Zibibbo secco, like the Gibelê, from Carlo Pellegrino's Duca di Castelmonte. We had it on Favignana Island and it was beyond lovely.
I’m crazy about islands. In fact, my bucket list has every island off the coast of Italy. I’m about halfway there.
The long ride from the old center of Palermo to Rapitala took us through a labyrinth of winding roads going towards the newer parts of the town. Past the English garden, where an affluence rivals ones seen along the coastal towns of Southern California.
Before we reached Rapitala we started seeing windmills. In this place where there are so many influences, I thought of another don, Quixote, and the simple sincerity that this land promised without the muddle of the human dealings. So much opportunity. So many squandered years.
Laurent is a bit of a transplant. The ultimate outsider, looking in to a culture and looking out from it. His wife is Sicilian. His children are Sicilian. His Father-in-law is from a Sicilian family who have been here since the Normans. He looks like Sean Connery, tall and handsome. His interests; photography, his palace and the patrimony of Palermo, one only needs to talk for a few minutes to see this family is stitched into the fabric of Sicilian and Palermitan culture, at the deepest levels. And even with Laurent being half French. But Sicily was the prototype for America in the melting pot creation of her people. And we are seeing, because the land is so fecund, these grapes assimilated and the wines that come from them as an expression of this prolific land.
Over a glass of late harvest Sauvignon Blanc and a stunning duo of ice creams from Antica Gelateria Ilardo, one of jasmine and cinnamon and the other of straw berry, pistachio and decorated in the style of a cassata cake, we talked about this French influence. Funny because we were now tasting food from the influence of the Arab culture.
I was sent on a mission from the past, 100 years into the future, the place where my grandfather and his family lived to Palermo. The original intention was to report back to them what changes had been made since 1910. But I landed in 2010 and cannot seem to find my way back into the past.
Palermo is weighted to the past. However it plays out, the line from di Lampedusa’s Gattopardo, “In order for things to stay the same, things will have to change” is more apt than ever. Things have changed, but I am not sure if they have been for the better. I remember my family home on the Via Roma, in the old town center, and all the activities that fanned out from it. Whether it was to go to the open market, La Vucciria or the visit a church, or a mosque or a cathedral, Palermo is full if repentant sinners and saints on a wayward mission. It must be experienced, for there is an energy here that I can only say, for me strikes at the deepest of the tribal levels in my visceral being. I am so much a part of this place, like I am of certain places in Californian and in Texas. But this is the ground zero for my little clan, which is dwindling rapidly. I noticed on the door of the old palace that it is now for sale, having been parceled out. Luxury condos in the historic center. Scattered to the four points on earth.
Palermo, a town where the most beautiful bells ring during the day. In the wind the sound carries and the world becomes a symphony of chimes and chants and glorias to the omnipotence of faith and hope. And meanwhile down below, people scramble and scrapple and try and find a way to make a living, as meager as it might be. The world lands on the shores of Palermo and they can barely get to the baroque churches and the self portraits, for the garbage people are on strike and the town is piling up trash daily, ``
Are we in Italy? Did the plane veer away from the volcano and land us in Cartagena or Timbuktu? There are vineyards? Wine?The smell of cardamom in the vicolo mixing in the air with the roasted coffee beans. The flavor of nutmeg in the timbale. The shimmer of semi precious stones on the hand of the young and beautiful Contessa.
Through the palm lined streets and the body guarded palaces there are ways out into the country. There are vineyards, more vineyards planted than there is demand for. Our host tells us, “Half the vineyards in Sicily will disappear.” That is how things work, they just disappear in this place?
My grandfather Alfonso and Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa were the same age and from the same town. Both families frequented certain circles of Sicilian society. But when my grandfather was fifteen, he traveled to Texas and never moved back to Sicily.
When my father and his sister were born in Dallas, it wasn’t too much later that the family moved to Los Angeles. My sisters and I were born in Southern California and they still live there, as does most of my father’s family. Most of my family in California have very good business and are in good shape for the future.
Somehow, thirty years ago, I decided to move back to Texas, one step closer to the Italian reality that my grandfather left 100 years ago. And while I doubt I’ll complete my grandfather’s circle and return to Italy permanently, I somehow am attached to Italy more than my grandfather. All of this through a period of change, revolutionary change. It seems the last 100 years has been one giant change machine. And it looks like more is on the way.
I look at the life we hold up and want to continue, but know it was never sustainable. The large fast cars and even larger houses, the piles of money needed to warm a 9,000 square foot home that houses two, maybe three people, those days are coming to a close. Maybe not in two or three years, but in the next 50, most likely that will all be a memory of a time when folks took more than they needed.
Just like the book, “The Leopard", by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, which chronicled the last days of an era that had outlived its purpose, so now we are living in a time when in order for us to keep an equilibrium in our lives we must be agents for change, embracing it and moving with it. I am ready for this. Looking forward to it. This is our destiny and it is an electrifying time.
And because of the comfort zone that some folks in the Italian wine business have arrogated, I feel Italy is unwilling to go forward in these times. Some of it from hubris and some from lack of hope. But the numbers don’t lie. If Italy does not get beyond personal self-gain and self-inflicted drama, the market will leave them behind. There is too much energy coming from places like Argentina and Australia and California, wines and people who will tap into their spirit of place and send creations that will commend our new era.
