Ep. 1866 South of Somewhere by Robert Camuto | IWP Book Club With Richard Hough

The Italian wine podcast is the community driven platform for Italian winegeeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italian wine podcast dot com. Donate five or more Euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book, my Italian Great Geek journal. Absolutely free. To get your free copy of my Italian GreatGeek journal, click support us at italian wine podcast dot com, or wherever you get your pots. Welcome to the Italian wine pot cast book club. Each month, we select the great wine book to share, we chat to the author and get your opinions. Stay tuned as we read between the vines with the Italian wine podcast. Hello, and welcome to book club with the Italian wine podcast. This is the third episode of a new show focusing on the world of wine writing. Each month we choose a book, chat to the author, listen to some extracts and explore the story behind the book. We'd really like your ideas and suggestions too. So if there's a wine book or a wine writer that you'd like us to feature, please let us know. Last month, we received a message from Barbara Fitzgerald, whose family are among the the great Californian wine industry pioneers, and here's what she said. Last year, I read Robert Camuto's new book called south of somewhere, is all about the magic of wine and people in the south of Italy. Each chapter focuses on a different region and a producer who is not just making wine, but often defying the odds. The way Robert talks about the beauty and the culture in the south sent Chills up my spine. He also talks about growing up in the US as an Italian American and what it feels like to travel back to Italy to see family. At times, I felt like he was telling my own story. So to Barbara and everyone else listening, I'm delighted to introduce today's guest. Robert Camuto. Hi, Robert. How are you? Hi. Great. Great. That was a fantastic message from Barbara. Yes. Yes. I thought you'd like that as a as a way just to Yes. Thank you, Barbara. K. So Robert is a journalist from New York City. In two thousand and one, he moved to Southern France with his family. And the result of that experience was Cork Groot adventures in the new French wine country, which was published in two thousand and eight. He then shifted his attention to Italy and published Palmento, a sicilian wine Odyssey in twenty ten. In two thousand and fifteen, he moved to Verona where he lives and works to this day. He's a contributing editor for wine spectator magazine and writes a regular column Robert Camuto meet. We will discuss your most recent book south of somewhere wine food and the soul of Italy shortly. But first, I wanted to explore that experience of growing up as an Italian American your father, I think Robert was born on the upper east side in nineteen thirty six. It's kind of sicilian migrant. Lower lower east. Lori side. Sorry. Know the difference. Yes. Yes. Yes. Maybe that's something we can we can get it to. Upown and downtown. Okay. He went on to become what the New York Times described as a shoe mogul and a a quiet titan of retail. Your latest book, south of somewhere, is dedicated to your maternal grandparents, Rafael Le and Conchetta. To a born in Vico Acwency, a small town on a dramatic cliff overlooking the Bay of Naples. They too emigrated to New York between the wars. So can you give us some kind of insight into their lives? What brought them to New York City in the nineteen twenties and what it was like for them as migrants from the south of Italy? Well, if we talk about their story, it's a fairly typical story. I mean Italian immigrants between the wars came out of desperation if nothing else. Yeah. Their goal was to work and establish themselves in America. They learned American on the boat. You know, I think in many ways my upbringing wasn't really, I would say Italian American, I grew up as an American kid. My parents moved a lot, etcetera, etcetera. But I think through my grandparents, I was able to experience some of that old culture, especially around the table, you know, everything around the meal. In fact, as I note in the book, my grandfather, my maternal grandfather in his, deli in New York, his, Italian delicatessen, he had for a while made wine in the basement, like many Italian American. Great trucks came in from California, and they, you know, made their own personal wine, which is something that I think really caught on during the prohibition years in America. It was a big thing because during prohibition, while the sale of wine and alcohol was prohibited, wine for personal usage was allowed for, for personal family use. Because otherwise, I think many of these workers would have found life impossible working in mines in Minnesota. And, interestingly, not something I write about, but I've read about in the, for example, the biography of the Montabis, that was how the Montavi family got their start, was the, father, cesare, who had been selected by their town in Minnesota, a mining town in Minnesota to go get grapes in California. And that's how they discovered grapes because, if you could imagine working in a mine or in Minnesota or working on a skyscraper in, New York. You know, those are many of the jobs, mining construction jobs that many of the southern migrants that were in the eastern part of the United States did, you know, doing that without having a little bit of Vino. You know, at home in the evening with your meal would have made life a lot more grim. Absolutely. I can imagine if you're, if you're in a job like that, a little glass of wine that reminds you of home is what you need. Yes. Yes. And of course, you know, we grew up around my grandmother's table. It was always a time of, you know, celebration and Italian American immigrants didn't so much make a you know, Italian pure food because many of the ingredients were impossible to get. So, you know, famously, they adapted a lot of the recipes to what was available out of my grandmother's kitchen, which was the size of a postage stamp, and New York City, you know, she really, you know, created wonderful creations that brought everybody together. Yeah. I mean, I'm getting every real strong sense of your Italian origins there. Even though, as you said, you you grew up more or less as a as an American rather than a Italian. I suppose for you, a turning point as as as I read correctly from your book was this experience in nineteen sixty eight as a ten year old child from New York that magical summer where where where you spent in the Bay of Naples with your extended family. And you paint a really vivid picture of that experience in the introduction of south of somewhere talking about your extended family, how they look, how they dress, what they eat. Can you relive some of that forest and give us a sense of of what what that was like for a ten year old boy coming from New York City? Yes. So Again, when I was ten, I went with my grandmother and my cousins back to Vico Equinze in this gorgeous town on the Mediterranean overlooking the Bay of Naples, which incidentally I know that, every year when they do these, polls in Italy of one of the most romantic places to be married in Italy, etcetera, etcetera. Vico and Wednesday is always in the top one or two or places. Yeah. Just behind the owner. Anyway, returning to Vicwood Pense with my grandmother and cousins. In nineteen sixty eight, I was ten years old. And spent the summer there really down at a restaurant along the sea. It was the only restaurant at the time down in seaside, Vico Aquenzo, Vico Equenzo, which is also known as Seiano, the restaurant was called Osercino, and it was connected to the family by marriage. And basically, I just remember spending time on the docks there, swimming off the docks, go out in wraps, eating ice cream, eating pizza, going up into town, playing ping pong, and, you know, the nights on the square. It was a whole lifestyle that I never experienced in my life before. And, it was a beautiful time also to be in Italy, to be in the south of Italy. It was the boom period in the sixties. People were dressed beautifully. They had shiny little fiats. Yeah. It was just a beautiful summer. And I remember anytime I or my cousins would ask anything, can we do this? Can we do that? The answer was always, why not? Why not? Sure. See, but, you know, in fact, you know, I remember walking up the hillsides back to town from the seaside and just the little memories really stick with me. Just you know, the smell of olive fields, that kind of earthy, dusty, smell, I remember an ant's kitchen window where there were figs hanging outside the window, and you know, the smell of her little mocha making a coffee in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. At that age, your your senses are so finely tuned and and your memory of them, I think as well is heard about that age, you you remember you store these memories for the rest of your life. I I was struck reading that passage, actually, my wife has a similar experience in that she's Scotts Italian. She was born in Glasgow and grew up in the the nineteen eighties and come back to rural Tuscany. And spent summers in rural Tuscany and the mountain village there. And she always speaks about that sense of freedom that she had that wasn't available to her growing up in Glasgow, but when she came back to Italy with her parents, for both the parents and the children, there was a sense of coming home and having a freedom that was different to their experience in the in the place where they they migrated to. Yes. And also the just this simplicity of life, which I think still persists in Italy, but we can hope that with all the development of like, for example, oh no tourism, etcetera, etcetera. Things don't get too slick, too sophisticated. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that that that's something I wanted to ask as well. You you talk about this persistence of that that way of life and wonder have have we or has Italy in a sense lost those habits or those customs that notion of extended family of shared meals together with a carafe of wine on the table. And again, that's something from from my experience, I remember with my parents in law. There would always be a bottle of wine on the table at lunchtime at dinner time. Is that way of life at risk? I don't think it's at risk, particularly in the south. I mean, at risk, who knows? But I think that, you know, if you look at Italy, is really probably three major areas with three distinct histories and three distinct cultures. Think there's the south, there's Central Italy, and the north, which we might divide in between northeast and northwest. But I think in the south, one of the distinct aspects of the culture is the individual is so important there. The person is so important. Not so much. The business, but the person coming first. And it's just this incredible, natural hospitality that just flows from the very beings of people. You know, the idea to make people eat well, the idea to accommodate them well, to care about their need. I remember a couple of years ago, I was in the middle of companion in, Benavento area. It was a really hot afternoon, and I just wanted a nice glass of sparkling water. That's all I really wanted I thought you were gonna see sparkling wine there, but no no no in the middle of the afternoon. I mean, there's enough wine when I travel generally at lunch at dinner. So I I just wanted that nice cold glass of water. And I sat down outside at a table, and, you know, the barman came up, and he brought back, oh, well, I said, I'd like a little San Pallegrino. And he said I think he was confusing you with the pellegrino winery in Sicily. But anyway, so he brings out a nice, icy glass of water, a slice of lemon, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then when I went to pay, I said, how much do I owe you? Shrugged and said, what? For water? You know, nothing. Yeah. You know, I don't think that is what one would find everywhere in, Italy, certainly not everywhere in the world. In New York. I'll ask for those night. I can only Five dollars or something like that. So it's just this sense of welcome. And I remember that same day, I went by a restaurant to reserve in the evening, and the owner was just walking out the door. And he said, oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Come get a coffee with me. I did. I went down to another bar and had a espresso there. So, you know, I think that that's something that one still finds in all of these individual stories in the south. Yeah. Okay. Good. That's good to hear that that those customs and traditions and that that sense of hospitality that I've experienced as well actually, the the hospitality you can encounter there is is unbelievable. Yeah. Also, I was gonna say not long ago, I was back in Vico Equinze for a reading that I did for the Italian edition of south of somewhere that's called Altroi Assoud. My wife was there. My son was there. And Vico at Guenza, some say it has the greatest, concentration now of, Michelin starred restaurants. One of them is the successor to the Ocettuccino that I was talking about that's Tore Cettuccino that is run by, Genara Esposito. And actually the proprietor of the place of the walls is my cousin Vittoria. But anyway, there's also a famous chef from Vico Aquanze. Well, there's more than one. There's, kind of also, and closes his restaurant in, in summer, and the whole staff goes up into the hills up into the mountains, the Monte, which are behind Vico Quanze. It's separated from the amalfi coast. And they have a kind of an agriturismo there, and people go for Sunday lunch. We'd gone with our sun. There was just the three of us. Beautiful views over the mountains, the coast the sea fantastic. I explained to them, our son had a plane to catch to go back to London where he lives. I said, look, he has about an hour and a half, two hours maximum. And the response was oh, well, you know, I don't know that that's possible. We're not McDonald's. You need at least three or four hours for lunch. Yes. Yes. Yes. I have all these big families there that had gone into the hills for Sunday lunch, and it was just absolutely gorgeous. And by the way, for, I believe, that for antipasti, there were like thirteen little Sure. Things that came out one after, you know, another Yeah. Amazing. Probably a good time to do your first reading. Okay. Great. So in this passage, I'm I'm gonna be talking a little bit about not just a personal story, but about the Italian wine producing South in general. Italy is not just the world's largest wine producer, but is also an endless source of stories. It also has a long and checkered wine history, from the spread of the vine through Europe during the Roman Empire to the modern postwar industrialization of vineyards and maskale cooperative wineries. Italy's movement to modern fine wine, which we recognize today on wine shop shelves, high end restaurant wine list began in earnest only after a horrifying deadly scandal shook the world's faith in Italian wine. In nineteen eighty six, twenty people died and dozens were blinded after drinking inexpensive table wines fortified with poisonous quantities of methanol, a cheap wood alcohol commonly used to produce formaldehyde and automobile fuel additives. Ironically, the scandal was not centered in some poor southern province controlled by mafia bosses, but in northeastern, Italy, esteemed in somewhat snobby Piedmont, close to France. It was also here in a kind of grand scale atonement that the reset of Italian wines began. Making better wines meant not only analogous, modern testing labs, good and clean equipment, and dedicated winemaking spaces, but also years of research in selecting varietals and studying soils. Perhaps the greatest challenge was a change of attitude, choosing to favor quality over quantity, transforming wine from a source of calories in the countryside to a source of exquisite pleasure in the cities where people now live has taken time. As has convincing old school, Contadini, naturally, it took longer for some parts of the south to get the memo. Rural southerners, long under the Yoca feudalism or the church, often lacked the entrepreneurial instincts that benefit small scale commercial winemaking. Up until a couple of generations ago, agriculture was life of misery, who had money to spend on wine. Thankfully, mentalities and opportunities have changed. Wine, like communication, was once controlled by a few who had access to investment technology and markets. In recent decades, as technology, access and education have been democratized, so is winemaking. With even a small investment and a bit of time, good wine can be made anywhere, you can grow good grapes. Italy's greatest strength is its culture of Renaissance. Not the Renaissance period, but the idea of inspired renewal in what may seem a very dark hour. So it was in wine. Today you find the spirit of Renaissance when a daughter of Contadini uses her grandfather's grapes in some forgotten patch of countryside to launch her own wine label. Of course, it is one thing to make grape wine and another to sell it. Thanks to new generations of adventurous winery from the United States, Northern Europe, and elsewhere across the globe. There was a growing thirst for new discoveries among old vineyards. While it's become popular to bash globalization, in fact, the wine world would dry up without it. One of the beautiful things about a connected world is that for the first time, the aforementioned daughter of Contodini in the deep south of Italy can develop an ardent following for her wines in Tokyo, London, Brooklyn, or Los Angeles. Italianions need the world outside its borders to thrive. It's been that way for thousands of years. The world also needs Italians for their sense of beauty and design and their hands that make products, including finished marble ferraris, and Feris Woli pasta. Italians with their high tolerance for chaos also serve as an antidote to a very stressed out modern world. In one way or another, Italy's lifestyle has spread through the world. You can find Italian restaurants in the Himalayas, but Italians have yet to conquer their own land. Fantastic. And we'll touch on a on a couple of themes that you mentioned there, particularly, I think, might be quite interesting to talk about this high tolerance of chaos. But before we do that, I I want to ask you about the new generation of of winemakers and and you spoke also about the this connected world I know that you moved to to France in two thousand and one, you wrote about a new generation of winemakers and you described that that new generation and the wines that they're producing in your book Cork screwed. So can you tell us what what inspired you to move to France in two thousand and one that sounds like quite a dramatic gear change and what you discovered during your your years in France? Yes. Well, the reason for the move was, my wife and I had lived in, of all places, North Texas for fifteen years. I'd gone there for work, working for the noun defunct newspaper that Dallas time is Harold. And, with an idea of being there for two years, which turned into fifteen. I also, founded a weekly newspaper called, FW Weekly, or Fort Worth weekly, which is still existent. After founding that paper, I really discovered I'm not a manager who likes to maintain something. So after the five years of the creation process, I sold that at a good time. And it was around our kitchen table in Fort Worth, Texas that my wife and I were pondering our future with our seven year old son. She's originally She was born in Niece, France, grew up in California. And over a bottle of wine around the, dinner table one evening, I said, why don't we try living in knees? And, we knew we were gonna move. So we decided to go for it while we were still young. And you know, rather than waiting for retirement or some such thing like that. Fantastic story and I absolutely really like the fact the catalyst was was that bottle of wine on this. Yes. Yeah. And so when I got to the south of France. I mean, looking around and looking for something to write about to continue writing, which is something I just have to do. It really struck me that what was really happening at that time was this regionalization and new awareness of small French wine regions. You know, it was no longer just Bordeaux, burgundy, Champagne, But, this similar process of new generation picking up their grandparents were, little bit of, you know, technology that made boutique wine making possible. And they were starting to make really good and interesting wines. And there was that whole natural wine thing that was taking hold at that time too, which was, often good often maybe not so good, but always interesting. You know, there was a real sense of, people exploring their terroir from all over, you know, whether it was the, luberon mountains, these little corners are the Rone or Southwest France, the Loire Valley, the Jura. It was all kind of happening. It was a great time to be there. Yeah. Are you enjoying this podcast? There is so much more high quality wine content available for mama jumbo shrimp. Check out our new wine study maps or books on Italian wine including Italian wine unplugged and much much more. Just visit our website, mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Now, back to the show. After fifteen years, you decided to move again, you came to to Verona, but your obvious connections to the south of it today. What what made you choose Verona? Why were you inspired to come here? To begin the next chapter of your life? Well, another milestone of life, our son had left home and gone to university. In my work and interest, I was spending more and more time in Italy because I saw more of the action moving here. Those same things that I saw happening in France and the OOs were taking hold in places like Italy and the south of Italy. And my second book, Palmanteau, as a Selian miner, his, Odyssey, focused on just this whole renaissance that was happening in Sicily, a lot of it on the, this new generation of crazy wine scene that was happening on Mount Edna. But, I'm just more and more drawn to Italy. When people ask me the difference between the two, I sometimes say that France is much more organized and Italy's more fun. Yeah. And so I talked about it with my wife, the idea of, moving to Italy, and she thought about it for a few days. And she said, okay, but Rome and South is not possible. And I think she thought of it in terms of, you know, being a woman, the level of organization, and blah blah blah. And so, we love Corona. We've traveled here many times, and it's a great strategic place that you know, to go, you know, throughout Italy. I mean, in three hours, you're in Rome and by train. Yeah. You know, one hour to Venice, one hour to Milan, one hour to Milan, one hour to the Alto Adi Jay. It's a great strategic center, a great wine place. So that's how we ended up here. Okay. Interesting. And yes, we'll come back to to your experiences and your your thoughts on on Sisley in a moment, but Let's take a a second reading Robert this, I think, is from the chapter entitled three gentlemen of Abruzzo, and it focuses on this wonderful character and Yes. Yes. Cio Bepe is a course of a wine legend for red wines and in a brusso. He's quite up in years, a dapper gentleman, legend in a brusso for his red wines. At the time of this reporting, he was about eighty five years old, a patriarch with his daughters and granddaughter at beacon of red wine quality that is Pepe arrived in his summer work clothes and pointed with a weathered index finger to a picture frame containing one yellow typed page. On it was a list of wines, a simple report, of the minutes of something called the Friends of Good Wine Club from Chicago in nineteen seventy nine. Look Pepe said in Italian, breaking out of his usual dialect. His eighty five year old voice was as deep and raspy as a vintage car engine. This was from nineteen seventy nine, America, Chicago. The list was a ranking of Italian reds tasted by the club in February of that year. At the top of the list, was a medial pepe multiple chano nineteen seventy, pepe grunted for emphasis, as if to say, look at that. His finger descended the list, stopping at each of the other nine wines that were tasted. Mostly Piedmont wines, like the nineteen seventy one Barolo, from the legendary traditionalist, Giacomo Capelano, and in nineteen seventy one Nevirolo, from Giacomo Contero. Along with Piondi Santis, nineteen seventy three, I was first before all of these, Pepe said, Barrolo Pronelo Piondi Santi, Chicago, he added. I've been to America a hundred times. A mediocre Peppy is obviously a man with a lot of pride and no small ego. He rarely drinks the wines of others and talks about few wines he admires outside of those produced by the winery of his late friend and fellow Bruso eccentric Eduardo Valentini. I made better reds, Pepe said. He had soils and altitude and exposition that are better for the whites, but for reds, I always beat it. I followed Pepe out the back door and into the old multiple chino vineyard, that sloped down the hillside toward Toronto. He explained his neatly prescribed formula for cultivating pergola vineyards. The canopies of his vines were short trimmed to provide what he says is the optimal ratio of one vine, one square meter of leaves for one kilogram of grapes. It takes about one and a half kilos to make a bottle of wine. As he walked in the shade under the vines, he tied up blue shoots and pulled dried ones that had been cut but left in the wire grid above. The result he said of sloppy work during the recent vine pruning. Look at this. You don't leave things like this. He complain. Tucking on a long brown desiccated cutting and dropping it on the ground. Kiara, whose father Giuseppe works with Pepe in the vineyards. Joined us and followed her grandfather's lead in tying up the loose ends. The workers are always making me angry, he cried into the heat of midday, with only me, Kiada, and a few secadas to hear him. Then after nearly a minute, he fumed, the workers are going to kill me. As he walked back up the hill, he veered from the vines into the rows of greens and tomatoes that pepe also cared for. Along with the family chicken, perspiring from a morning of work, he proclaimed the countryside is my gym, not just a gym for the physique, but for the mind also. As we entered the house for lunch, as if letting me get on a secret, he leaned in toward me and said, in a low voice, you stop, you die. Wonderful. What a character. I love this idea that he rarely drinks the wines of others. Yes. Why would you if you were producing line of such quality, but it it reminded me also, I I once made the mistake of taking a bottle of French wine to my Italian father-in-law. The first time I met him, I arrived from France with a bottle of French wine. And for a proud tuscan, this was obviously idealized now at unacceptable and the bottle of wine. It was a fine bottle of wine, but it remained unopened in his cabinet for many, many years. Yes. I guess, I think it's interesting as a character, you know, as a strong character, a strong stubborn character, would be that way, but I think I really do appreciate winemakers who don't like to drink their own wine, who want to taste everything else. And I think that's interesting too because, you know, the thing about wine is it pulls us in wine should not be about drinking the same thing every night. It should be about, drinking something different every night. Yeah. And that's what makes the wine world so interesting. I think it's really a golden age now where you can go down the rabbit holes and follow trails of, in any direction you want, whether it's geographical, stylistically, whatever, white, red, and in between. Yeah. Absolutely. And one place where it's certainly a golden age is Sicily I want to bring you to Sicily now, Robert, and Edna, in particular, you described having a front row seat to the most dramatic rebirth of Aetna wine, which in the space of these twenty years went from being a forgotten wine sold in plastic containers to the most famous wine in the south of Italy. What what was it that you observed about Aetna that allowed or enabled this renaissance to take place? Was it the producers? Was it geography? Was it market conditions? Yeah. Well, look, I think it's really a an accumulation of fact. Obviously, Edna is some pretty stunning volcanic terroir. And it's not just volcanic soils, but it's a volcano. So these things are actually always changing, you know, with, every lava flow, every spewing of volcanic dust, and you have different altitudes and exposition. But terroir is nothing without people. I mean, you can have the best terroir in the world, and if you have people or producers who are not very curious, not very adventurous, not very driven, you might not have the quality or certainly the potential that you could have. What changed on Aetna in the early OOs was a confluence of people, some from outside, that created a scene of friends, if you will, who were there, tasting each other's wines, experimenting, and feeding off of each other. You had Marco de Gracia, Italian American, Andrea Franketti, a Roman Frank Cornelison, a Belgian crazy winemaker who went to Aetna because he wanted to make wine without even using sulfur in the vineyards. They joined some of the people on it, who had been working there, you know, for years, like, the anologist, Salvofoty, and many of the other families that were there. It just created the the right mix of people with the right amount of new generation locals. I'm thinking Juseppe Russo, Alberto, Chirub giandi, many others. I think the difference is, and I think it's been said in the book, Palmetto, some of these families that were out in Sicily, they were over these big dominions in the middle of Sicily. But when you're over a big dominion of, say, like, a thousand hectares in the middle of Sicily, it can be a fantastic place to grow grapes and make wine. But who do you talk to over coffee in the Who do you, you know, at harvest time? Who do you compare with? And that's what made Aetna so exciting. Small parcels of land, small estates. You know, so it became a laboratory. Yeah. It it strikes me that there are parallels in with the experience in California during the the birth if you like of of californian wine in the Napa Valley, that coming together of people from different places. Is that that a fair comparison or not? I have to think about that for a minute because I think that Napa right now is very, very staid. It's become one of the most staid places in the wine world based on two or three grapes. But I think that you're right that back in the day, there was that excitement over the judgment of Paris, people striving, comparing, doing, and I think you find that perhaps in other places in the States, a little bit more of that experimentation, maybe more north in places like Sonoma, and I've written about this a bit in my column, the people that are you know, trying to experiment with more and more and more outlier grapes, particularly Italian grapes. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I I want to switch topics slightly to to talk about you as a writer. You're writing habits. You're also a columnist. So can you give us a sense of where you write when you write, what are your habits as a writer? Are you drinking something? Are you listening to music? You paint these really colorful portraits of characters in your book as well. So I was curious to know when when you meet these people, when you interact with these people, are you taking notes? Are you are you are you creating mental images in your head? What is your process as a writer work? Well, I generally take notes. Sometimes I record if there's a sit down interview. I try to also observe other things that are going on other than just what person is saying. Try to take notes of different things, like the plants, the weeds that are growing by the side of the vineyard. What are they? What kind of birds are singing. Yeah. Yeah. So I try to take notes of a lot of little details, what we're eating, what's in the food. And, and generally, I would say writing, I like to write at home in the morning, as early as possible, because I think that's when the mind is fresh. Yeah. Okay. Good day observation that that stuck in my mind that you use quite frequently is what people are wearing, whether it's sunglasses or thickness style of shirt or t shirt or sneakers. And I think it is these little details that just help the reader to picture the scene rather than getting too focused on what's in the glass. You're painting a much broader canvas. Yeah. Well, and I also think like in Italy, in particular, clothes are definitely an expression. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's funny. I just got back from California and I one particular thing I noticed is you have these t shirts that have so many words on them. They're like entire sentence. Yes. Yeah. It's become a trend. Yeah. And definitely, you know, living in in Italy what people wear is is a statement. They're so elegant. They're so refi even if they're casual, they're still there's still a lot of thought going into what they're wearing that you won't see them in feels fitting close for example. Everything is is made to measure, and I'm always struck when I go back to to Scotland just how how different that is. People are generally in baggy jeans, baggy t shirts, and taking much less care about how they look. So, yeah, I think those little insights give a really vivid picture of what it is you're you're writing about and the characters behind the the clothes I suppose as well. Okay. Let's do the the third reading, Robert, and then then we'll finish up with with what you're reading for pleasure at the moment. So this is from the chapter volcano of Vildore, and it focuses on Elena Fucci. One of those young producers that I just spoke about making organic wine around this extinct volcano in the Vasiliicata region. Nothing much happens in Barile. After the sun reaches its daily zenith, the three thousand denizens of this town at the instep of the Italian boot disappear from sight as if in a southern slumber. The streets are left to roaming cats and lounging dogs. There wouldn't be a reason to pass through here, if Berelee didn't drape halfway up the eastern flanks of one of Italy's most compelling natural wonders, the dormant volcano, Monte voltore. Which from certain angles appears to rise up from basilicata's planes like the silhouette of a vulture in flight. Its inner core is full of life, having collapsed tens of thousands of years ago, into a geological sinkhole or caldera filled by the green, and a pair of vast and deep spring fed lakes. But relay's dominant group of settlers, as in most towns, arrived about five hundred years ago with a wave of Christian albanian refugees fleeing the Muslim Ottoman occupation of their homeland, In addition to taking up cultivation of these fertile dark soils, these arborish settlers dug a honeycomb network of sassy cave dwellings in the volcanic tough stone. The troglodyte societies of Baselikata are now famous because of the three thousand year old city of matera, dug into a river canyon about sixty miles southeast of Barile. But they were hidden from the rest of the world until the relatively recent days after World War II. The man who brought them to light was the anti fascist doctor and writer, Carlos Levy, who was exiled by Mussolini in the 1930s to Basley Carta, and observed the wretched poverty, lack of sanitation, pestilence, and lawlessness of a people guided by a murky fusion of Christianity with primitive superstitions. In his nineteen forty five book, Christ stopped at Ebola. He likened Matera's caves to Dante's inferno. The resulting scandal created programs in the 1950s to resettle Baselicata's cave dwellers in modern apartment blocks and houses. When the Italian poet and filmmaker, Pierre Paulo, filmed his gospel according to Saint Matthew in the early 1960s. He used Barili's SASi as a setting for ancient Bethlehem and to portray Palestine, he chose matera which was also used forty years later in Mel Gibson, the passion of Christ. While matera Sassy have seen a touristic renewal as a UNESCO world heritage site and a new generation of boutique ins and restaurants and bars, Borillae's caves have remained abandoned and overgrown or used in the making and storing of the area's best known product. It's potent Avianico de viltore, a red wine from its layered volcanic soils. Surrounded by orderly olive groves, wheat fields, vineyards, and grazing lands. Barile's population has been like that of most of Basalikata in steady decline for nearly seven decades. This despite modern efforts to keep new generations here, like the pair of factories in nearby MELFI that make fiat cars and Barilla pasta. Dynamic is not a word that had been used much for either Barile Aralianico Debelture, which never quite achieved its high potential as Italy's great next wine terroir. Then came Elanifucci. At thirty seven, she carried herself with a theatrical charisma that by twenty eighteen had put her at the center of a new informal group of eight young, smart, and hip organic producers called Generazione Volterre, demanding attention in the Southern wine wilderness. The key was in using Volterdays altitude and slopes to make wines with balance and elegance. Italian critics were already primed and ready for the prophesized coming of GratefulTore wines. A few had already hopefully, Chris in the area, the barolo of the south. I arrived in Barile on a Saturday afternoon in June and met Elena and her husband, Andrea Manzani, a florentine engineer, who was drawn south by love, giving up his old life for wine and Elena, who after a morning working in her wire nayry wore bright red lipstick and large bobble earrings, her dark eyes encircled with coal. With her black cleopatra bangs, green sneakers, and Gucci purse, she was a gypsy like force of nature. A tiny woman, she seemed to nearly leap up in the air as she walked. Andrea was her foil, ambling, laconic, and casually assembled, with rumpled jeans and a winery polo stretched across his broad well fed frame. When he spoke about half the speed of his wife, Arai grin crossed his wide open bearded face. I am the slave of Ella Nifucci, he said, introducing himself and holding up his wrists as if they were manigold. Then he shifted from Italian to English and added human rights. Goodbye. Wonderful. Yeah. Another another fantastic passage, Robert, again, these really vivid portraits of some fantastic characters, and basilic artists, originally I I haven't yet had the fortune to visit, but it's definitely on my list. Yes. It's a beautiful spot. Vasili got to is amazing how it's one of the least densely populated areas of Italy. It's wide open. It's clean. It's beautiful. Yeah. There's mountains, there's sea. There's everything. So it's easy to see why you would be drawn south for love. Yes. Okay. I I want to switch before we before we close away from the world of wine to what you're you're currently reading. What's on your bedside table? On my bedside table now, I have two books. That have nothing to do with wine incredibly. One is kind of a heavy sociology book that I've just delved into at the recommendation of my son. It's, Charles Taylor's a secular age. It's a super interesting book because it really contrasts how people would have thought and felt in the year fifteen hundred versus the twenty first century. A lot of the things we take for granted now, I think are really explained in that book about how all the little choices we make and have to make now, whereas five hundred years ago, people didn't do that. Because they were sort of integrated in a system. Yeah. Interesting. And how nice to get a recommendation, a good recommendation from your son? Yes. Dream of the day when my son gives me a reading recommendation that isn't And the second book that I'm reading simultaneously is called Profit Song by the Irish writer Paul Lynch, and it's kind of a dystopian novel about how, you know, where people start disappearing, police start showing up at doors and asking questions, but it's just kind of a fun chilling sort of read that has nothing to do with why. Good. And, yeah, I think it's important. I do a lot of wine reading and wine writing, but it's also that good I think is to switch off that part of the brain and and read something out. I I also like to read books set in the place, but I'm visiting. So I I was recently in bologna and I picked up a copy of a quiet death in Italy by Tom Benjamin. It's an English writer, a crime crime thriller that exposes the dark political underbelly of bologna. So quite gritty, but a great choice if you're planning a visit to bologna anytime soon. Right. What's next for you, Robert, in terms of your writing, but also more generally, have you good plans for the the summer? Are you will you be visiting the South anytime soon? Well, in fact, very soon, I plan to be going through a Campania. Exploring some new areas there that I haven't spent much time in around, and also returning to, Vico iguenze, where there is the first winery there. A couple that's made some investments with a partner and, is experimenting with some interesting wine. So I'm very curious to see what's going on there. Yeah. I imagine you'll be a guest of honor. Yeah. I suppose. Okay. Fantastic. Tell us where kind listeners get copies of your books. Where can they get a copy of south of somewhere? And where can they follow you? More generally? I have a website robert camuto dot com. The book south of somewhere can be purchased anywhere you order books. Okay. Great. Without saying their name. Okay. Fantastic. Your favorite online, so Your favorite online supplier. Do follow my column also. It's called Robert Camuto Meets. It's twice monthly at wine spectator dot com. That is free. Yeah. Highly recommended that that column as well. Some really interesting stuff about what's going on in Italy, but also across the wine world more generally. Robert, thank you so much for being my guest on book club. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Thanks for your company today. Until next time. Ciao Robert, Ciao Tuti. Ciao. Thanks for joining the Italian wine podcast book club. Tune again next month. When we'll get between the vines with another great wine book. Remember, our show notes, including full details of all the books we've discussed today, are available at Italianwine podcast dot com. Or wherever you get your parts.