Ep. 1846 Italy in a wineglass by Marc Millon | 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 book club. Each one, 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 first edition of a new show focusing on the world of wine writing. Each month, we'll choose a book We'll 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. I'm absolutely delighted to introduce our first guest on the show. Mark Millen. Hi, Mark. How are you? Hi, Richard. Nice to nice to hear you. Nice to be here. Great. You too, Mark. Now most of you will know Mark as the host of wine food and travel on the Italian wine podcast. The market's also a pioneering wine writer. Hero is first two books, the wine and food of Europe, and the wine roads of Europe on a typewriter long before PCs and the internet. So so that will give you an idea of just how long Mark has been doing this. Well, that that as well. He's also an Italian wine ambassador and a guide with Martin Randall. His latest book Italy in a wine glass, the taste of history is released on the eighteenth of April, and I am really thrilled that he's our very first guest on the show. Listening to your show market always makes me really hungry. So hopefully, this show will have a similar effect and inspire listeners to to read or to write about Italian wine. You graduated in English literature. You've been writing about wine and food for over forty years. What is it about wine and food that continues to inspire you to write? Well, you're right, Richard. It has been a long time and, you know, just mentioning that I wrote those early books on typewriters shows what a long journey it's been. But I guess when, my wife who's a photographer, Kim, and I began thinking about writing about wine and food. The world of wine was quite different, really. It was, it was an exciting time because wine used to be quite an exclusive subject, especially here in the UK. But, in the end of the seventies and by the eighties, people were beginning to travel with package holidays going to places with sunshine and wine and and and different foods. And it was an exciting, time to explore wine and food. And that's what we did with those first two books. And I guess, really, it would be fair to say that we've never stopped exploring and enjoying and discovering new wines and foods ever since. It's both professional activity, something we have spent, a good many years doing, but also it's something we never tire. It's a personal, and a passion and interest. And that's, the beauty of wine and food, and especially because It takes you places and introduces all of us to new cultures, flavors, and experiences. That's really interesting, Mark. And it it sounds like for you, right, to get something of a a partnership then with with your wife. Is that is that still the case? Well, it hasn't been in this book because it they're they're no illustrations or photographs in this book, but certainly for most of the books, I'm the writer, and Kim is the photographer. So, you know, we met when we were nineteen years old, I, as you said, I was studying English literature and and Kim was studying, English and fine art at Exeter University. And, we began, you know, working together from the earliest days, and When we began to think about writing about wine and food, we were actually already selling articles on wine and food to various publications. But we wanted to write a book and we began learning about wines and food simply by by traveling. We bought an old very, rickety old VW van, and we set off across the great wine regions of Europe. And it was exciting. It was incredible because line tourism didn't really exist then. And we would just roll up and knock on doors. And those doors opened, and people were so welcoming whether it was in the Grandes Champagne houses or in the bodegas of Harris de la Frontera or really knocking on farm houses in Italy. It was a time of when when, you know, wine producers weren't really expecting, wine tourism as such or expecting people to knock on their doors. And and, people are so welcoming and friendly. As you know, Richard, the world of wine is an incredibly friendly and hospitable place. And that's partly why the work that we've done over all these years has also been a pleasure. It's been amazing and time long story, like, a match made in heaven, Mark, and and also to be on on the cusp of something, the cusp of a movement, I suppose, or the cusp of, a new a new way of doing things to to be involved at that early part in any movement. Yeah. I think I think it was. And also, Richard, remember from a publishing point of view, it was a new era as well. It wasn't just that I wrote those first two books on a typewriter. This was actually the start of desktop publishing. And so previously, I don't think a young photographer would have been able to our first book had, over a hundred photographs of Kims in color and black and white. And it was partly the changes in technology and desktop publishing. That allowed books to be produced that had the pictures designed in the pages rather than inserted as sections. And so, you know, it was a great opportunity for us as well, you know, to simply the technology of publishing was was changing and and is still changing as as we know. So am am I right in saying Mark that Italy is now your your primary focus for your your rating Or do you still take an interest in in other regions as well? Well, we've written we've written extensively about France. So I've wrote a book about Spanish wines, the wine roads of Spain. We traveled elsewhere. I wrote a book about my family history, flavors of Korea, with, stories and recipes from a Korean grandmother's kitchen, which was about my grandmother. But, Italy has over the past many years been real love and the main focus of the tours that I lead with Martin Randall travel and also, much of my writing, and simply it's where we like to go. We were just in Florence over the weekend. For example, and it's always such a treat to return to Italy for all sorts of reasons. Yep. Which and that that brings us nicely to to your latest book, Italy, and a wine glass that tells the story of Italy through its wines from the ancient Greeks to the the COVID nineteen lockdown. That's a fairly epic undertaking. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't. As I'm sure, you know, It's been a big project. It's been a big project that You know, Richard, I began thinking about this book probably more than thirty years ago. And I was thinking about it because because the story of wine in Italy is the story of Italy itself. You know, so many of these wines would link back to different periods of time or to personalities, that, you know, really connected through the wine to the story of Italy, to the history of Italy. And so it's a it's a book that has really fascinated me and I wanted to write it and I've been thinking about it a long time and researching it. And yeah. Yeah. It's it's been a big project, but I mean, it's really was concentrated effort over the last three years or so. Great. And and what what was the impetus, Mark, you you've been you've been thinking about doing it for thirty years. What finally got it over the line? That's that's a good question. I think, you know, as I say, I've had the book in mind. I've planned it. I've got various different drafts of how I might be shaped, on my computer going back some years, but it was really lockdown that concentrated me. And I think I was ready to write it. I was really prepared because almost from the beginning of lockdown. So we're talking about end of March twenty twenty, which is when lockdown began here in the UK. I I worked incredibly diligently and began to write chapter by chapter, just going through the book chapter by chapter, and I and That's how I wrote it. That's interesting about about lockdown. I know from my own personal experience, I also published my first book during lockdown, so whatever else was going on during that pretty awful period. There was some freedom or incentive or motivation to write and to get something down on paper into complete projects that that I've been thinking about as well for for years. Yeah. I think that's I think that's right, Richard. Actually, I I really loved your book because it really was a portrait of that of that time, you know, in verona. And, I I, you know, I think we all found, and it was a very precious discovery that lockdown gave us was that we actually had time. Yeah. And we we didn't have to be anywhere else. We had time to do things that we we wanted to do. And, you know, we we should all have time anyway. We should be able to make time, but, lockdown gave really focused, I think, at least for me, I know it wasn't. It was a very difficult time. It was a tragic time. And, you know, it wasn't easy for everybody. It wasn't easy for us, but, what we did have was time. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So, Mark, you're you're going to be a passage from the introduction of Italy and a wine glass, and I I think that will really give readers an idea of the the context and which you're writing. Okay. So this is the beginning of the book, the introduction. The story of Italy has been entwined since its earliest days with the story of wine. From six thousand years ago and possibly earlier, when indigenous Italians were known to have used wine and funeral rituals to the present day, wine has been an ever present element on the Italian Peninsula and its islands. Throughout centuries in millennia, it has been a celebratory libration at great events in Italian history. It has lubricated moments of triumph and offered solace in times of despair. And it has been a constant feature of quotidian life for tyrants, emperors, kings, popes, holy Roman emperors, aristocrats, nobles, habits and monks, as well as for the common man and woman. In short, wine has been and continues to be an essential element of Italian civilization. It seems an obvious and enjoyable pursuit then to explore the story of Italy through its wines naturally with a glass in hand. Where to begin? I pour myself a measure of Pithos Rosso from a short squat bottle. The wine has a distinctive slightly sour nose and an earthy stone taste. I roll the wine around in my mouth chewing it, savoring it, and consider how wine uniquely has the power to transport us through space and time. Within a bottle of wine, good wine, real wine. There is a precise place contained. That spot where grapes were grown, cared for, harvested, then pressed and fermented to produce the liquid that we are now enjoying. Wine can encapsulate time too. Not only the year when those grapes were grown, harvested and pressed. The vintage date on the bottle. But even further back, connecting us in myriad ways to long ago eras, movements, personalities, and great moments in history. Italian wine, perhaps more than wine from anywhere else, holds within it such a rich concentration of stories and connections that link us directly to the past, whether to ancient times or to yes to hear. This wine Pethos rosso, for example, has been fermented on the skin in terracotta vessels buried underground as wine was made thousands of years ago. As wine was made in Southeast Sicily after the Greeks came to settle in Italy and Sicily in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE in what came to be known as manja Grisha. And as wine is once again being made today. Fantastic. Yeah. That that gives a really great sense of the the epic scope, I suppose, of of your book, but also the nature of wine, especially in Italy, is something that features in in our daily life? Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, and and and and so unselfconsciously. So naturally, you know, these links with the past. People who live in Italy, Italians just are aware of the past. And I think you living in Italy, you must find that, Richard, Italianians are very aware of the past. And, you know, the the distant past as well. Yeah. Absolutely. It's impossible to live in a city like Verona and not be aware of the past. Every morning on my way to the office here, I I cycle across the castelvecchio every afternoon at lunchtime on my way home. I I cycle through Kat Sabraas, the Roman Arvina. So, yeah, it's just impossible not to be aware of the history. Yes. And the statue of Dante, and is it the Gallegiate tombs as well. So Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's all around. And and that's everywhere in Italy. Yeah. And Italians are very aware of their own history. At least of the area they live in, the town they live in, the city they live in. Yeah. And I mean, your book is is full of anecdotes as well. I think of the kind of people who maybe you you meet on a bus or someone you meet while on holiday who just happens to explain the the significance of some monument or some person or some event important are those passages or those interactions that you have with everyday Italians? Well, you know, it's interesting. Every time I come to Italy, I think I meet somebody new or have a conversation that links something together, you know, this book could have gone on and on. I could have kept driving it because the, you know, it's a big book, but it's a really only scratched the surface. Yeah. So those interactions are very they're very enjoyable too. You know, when you meet somebody who talks talking about Frederick the second, you know, and you know, the the proudly as if they're talking about their own son. Yeah. Uh-huh. Absolutely. So each each chapter market, I think a writing saying opens with one of these introductory passages, I feel like, they're they're really mouthwatering, they place you, the radar, but also the reader at the heart of the narrative before you then discuss the history of the region. That's what I wanted to do, Richard. I wanted to make this book very personal with a personal description of my experience, yeah, relating to that chapter, whether it's, you know, the Greeks or the Romans, or the monastic tradition, or, you know, any any of the the Resordimento, and, you know, right up to the present time. But, you know, linking it to my experience through wine and then delving more in-depth into the history itself and then finishing with wine descriptions that relate directly to that chapter. Yeah. I I think those passages are are really brilliant, and they they do that really well. They they they make the the history almost seem alive. Your second reading is is is one such extract. It's from chapter nineteen, and it it takes us to the heroic winemaking. And I think at the time you're you're with your then to your old son guy as well. So this again is a a really a really wonderful passage from Italy in a wine glass. Oh, thank thanks, Richard. Yes. I wanna this chapter, as you say, chapter nineteen, it's ideals, economics, and heroic wines. And it really focuses on how Italy is one of the most cooperative countries in the world you know, cooperatives not just for making wine, but for all aspects of society and, you know, the fact that sixty percent of Italian wines are made in cooperative wineries and many of these wines are earning some of the highest accolades in awards. So I'm focusing on cooperatives here, but I'll just read this introduction. The cinque terre is without doubt one of the most beautiful and magical of all Italy's many beautiful line lands. It is also one of the harshest, most inaccessible, and labor intensive. Here on the ligurian seaboard, the steep cliffs have been carved out of shifting, inhospitable, sedimentary terrain, a flint and slate into a wave like pattern of vine covered terraces, held in place by centuries old, small, dry stone walls. I recall walking through this harshly beautiful vine scape many years ago when our sun guy was just two years old. As we struggled uphill from Manarola towards Groopo, We met an elderly barefoot woman emerging from the vineyards. Her head wrapped in a scarf to protect from the fierce midday sun. She stopped to admire our little boy. We talked about life in the cinque terre and the work in the vineyards. Yes. It is very hard. She said. The only people you see working in the fields are the old ones like me. No. The young today don't want to do it. In twenty years, all these vineyards will be gone. Turned back to scrubland and woods. In fact, that was now more than thirty years ago, and the vineyards today are thriving more than ever. Thanks a new small part to the efforts of a visionary and far reaching cooperative winery that has found a way ease the backbreaking workload in these vertiginous slopes and to safeguard and champion a remarkable wine and a way of life that would otherwise have been lost. It is bakingly hot First inducing in the sunshine, and we finally reach the cantina cinquitare. Here we pause in the shade to enjoy a glass of chilled cinquitare bianco fresh quenching clean and fragrant with a slightly salty aftertaste. This is a heroic wine in absolute perfect harmony with a land that gives it birth and with a simple maritime cuisine that it best accompanies. Wow. Fantastic. And again, I'm I'm I'm feeling first in there already. Just just thinking about that scene. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a beautiful area. Yeah. But, you know, it is. It is so interesting how heroic wines, heroic vine, heroic vine, are found throughout throughout Italy, you know, people working in really difficult conditions of labor intensive conditions in the in the Valle Dosta on Aetna on a on an active volcano, you know, at high altitude. And many other examples. And, you know, in this case, how how that cooperative winery has really helped to preserve not just a landscape, but indeed and the wines, but but really a way of life that that could have been lost Absolutely. And when you look at these landscapes, you think you must be crazy to try any form of agriculture there, but over over centuries, I suppose that's exactly what these people have done. Yeah. For first holiday as a family, it was to the cinque terre. And my son then was three years old. We had him in his Pasadena, and it was August and just navigating from from one part of the area to the next with him in his Pasadena with the heat. It was horrendous, to be honest. It was a really, very terrible holiday just because we underestimated the terrain, and we underestimated the heat. So I can only imagine what it must be like to be working in those kind of conditions. Yeah. Absolutely. And actually, you know, thinking about it with, you know, thirty years ago, has been a big change in climate since then. 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. You've already spoken about a couple of the historic wines that are featured in your book. How did you go about selecting those wines? I think there's over ninety different wines. That's a good question. I think the wines kind of selected themselves. And also, the wines sort of helped me to select the chapters to write. For example, if there hadn't been a wine relating to particular aspect of Italian history, I probably wouldn't have included that chapter. So the book isn't comprehensive history of Italy, of course. It's a very much a condensed way of approaching Italian history. But I think it was just that that incredible link between stories from the past and the wines themselves. Sometimes it was quite obvious, for example, writing about the Via Frinciigena on the pilgrims progress chapter. Of course, I would have to include, wonderful wine, wonderful named wine, s, s, SD Esti, Montefiascone, the wonderful wine story about the bishop who was traveling along the Francigena and sent his servant ahead to sample the wines to ensure that he only drank the best. And when they got to the town of Montefiasconi, the servant was so excited with the wine that he marked on the door, est, est, est, indicating a truly super narrative wine for the bishop to to sample. And in fact, he never made it to Rome. He he spent the rest of his life in Montefiascone. And I know it must be something of a true story because many, many years ago, we actually went to the cemetery and found, his tombstone, which is there. It sounds like a dream job. Something wine. Yes. Yes. Yes. Not a bad not a bad job as far as day jobs go. Absolutely. My first job when I came to Vodora, one of my first jobs I picked up was as a secret shopper in a ice cream store. You know, I could I couldn't believe my luck. I just had to go into the gelateria and and taste the ice cream and then pair a short report on the service and the the flavor, etcetera. Wow. That is a dream job in Italy. It didn't pay very well, but the the ice cream was delicious. Oh, yes. That's usually the case with these dream jobs. Mark, your final reading focuses on on one of the wines that you've identified. The Ribula Jala from through leaving it, say Julia. And that comes at the very the very end of the book, I think, Mark, and brings the whole story to a really nice conclusion. Yes. This is, the last wine in the books or the end of the book, and as you say the chapter, it's the last chapter. It's called back to the future. Reibula Jala, Venencia, IGT, Gravnor, Osavia, Friuly Venezia, Julia. We end our wine journey where we began with a wine made as wine was made some five thousand or six thousand years ago. Yosco Graftener is considered one of the giants of the Italian wine world, a producer who had the vision and the courage to turn his back on all the advances that had been made to improve Italian wine over the past decades and to see instead that the future for him really is rooted firmly in the past. Ribolajala is a native grape variety of Fruliovenencia, Julia. That has been grown in the vineyards of Colio for probably at least a thousand years where it thrives on the mineral rich Ponca terroir. Grav News vineyards above Osavia cultivated with immense hand care to biodynamic principles yields fruit that is of exceptional quality, high acidity, rich in minerality, and concentrated in flavor. These grapes can reach their highest expression when they're allowed to be transformed as simply and naturally as possible. In two thousand, Gravnor was convinced that the best way to achieve this would be through fermentation in terracotta, amphora. He thus eliminated all his stainless steel fermentation vessels. The refrigeration equipment filters and other winemaking tools, and instead installed the most basic terracotta Quevary from Georgia simply buried underground. It is in these vessels that since two thousand and one, all the Gravner wines ferment. Gravner produces a ribola jola as simply and naturally as possible. The grapes are destemned lightly crushed and then transferred to the quavery and left to ferment and to macerate on the skin. Slowly for upwards of seven or eight months, an exceptionally long period of time. This slow maceration on the skin extracts all the flavors and all the goodness out of the grapes. Afterwards, the wine is wracked and blended with the press wine. Then it ages for a further five months or so back in Amfra before being transferred to large old oak barrels where the maturation continues for another six years. For Gravner, this extraordinarily long sojourn in terracotta, and Oldwood results in wine of exceptional purity as if one were returning directly to the source to the very essence of the grape and the wine. Our journey through the story of Italy and its wines has been a long, and I hope enjoyable one. This truly legendary and iconic wine is a fitting one to finish on. Indeed, Gravner's Pribola Jolla is exceptional, burnished amber in color with aromas of dried and candied fruit, resin, balsamic herbs, an intense scent and mouthfeel of beeswax, complex in texture, extraordinarily rich in flavors that continue to evolve and develop with each sip It demonstrates a sheer beauty and magnificence of wine at its purest. It's power to transport us across centuries and connect us with cultures and civilizations. This is not a wine to drink with joyous abandon. It is a wine to sip and savor remembering the past, our own pasts as we look to our futures. Fantastic. Really beautiful, Mark. And, again, it it just captures that link between the the past and the the present, but so through a motive as well. Italian wine is emotive. I think, you know, we can analyze wine. We we taste, carefully and methodically, but in the end, I think the beauty of wine and in particular, the beauty of Italian wine is that it is emotional. It is we we it makes us feel things and connects us to to people and to places And that's what I love about it. Absolutely. Turning to the the craft of being a writer and your personal writing habits, how do you create the the mood to write beautiful passages like that? Are you drinking? Are you listening to music? Are you in a particular place? What what what are you doing, Mark, when you're writing? Well, I like to write in the mornings and in the early mornings. Usually, you know, I'll I'll I'll wake up early. And when I was writing this book, I was very disciplined. I was in the in my office. And at least six and sometimes earlier. But, you know, sometimes when I'm really involved in a project, I wake up at night thinking about words, I have to get up and write. And often some of my my best bits are bits I've woken up at night to write down. And I think if I turned over and gone back to sleep, I think of what I would have missed. And maybe there are a lot of things Yeah. That I've good things that I've missed when I went back to sleep. But I I do I do, you know, it's it's quite an immersive experience and, even through the production stages and the editing stages, I'm still thinking about the book a lot of the time. Yeah. It takes over your life, I suppose to some extent. Doesn't it? It's something that is constantly on your mind when you're when you're writing something then as you say, it's often at the the moments when you're not actually physically engaged in writing that some of your best ideas or your best moments of inspiration come. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. But I think certainly for me, writing has to be disciplined and and what needs to have a a work process. I I tend to work best that way. Any other advice for aspiring wine writers or or disc writers in general? You you mentioned the discipline and the routine, but any anything else, more practical advice for anyone who wants to. I think I think just right. I think I think, you know, even if you're writing and you're thinking it's not that good and you end up getting rid of it, you will have got something from that, even if you have to, you know, ditch what that whole day's work or even several days work is the fact that you've sat down and and put words. I would say words on paper as it used to be when I had a typewriter, but, you know, words on the screen, it counts for a lot and, you know, seeing the word count build is also a good motivator. Yeah. For sure. So moving away from the the world of wine to the to the pleasure, if you like, of of simply reading what's on your bedside table at the moment, Mark, what are you reading for pleasure? Actually, two books. I've, in fact, Jess Finner's the most wonderful book. It's called the marriage portrait by Maggie Farrell. It's a historical novel about Lucia Decosimo De medici, who marries off phones of a second, the Duke of Ferara. From the first page, you know that twelve months later, she is dead. And so it's an absolute page turner, written, you know, about sixteenth century Italy beautifully descriptive passages. Adio Ferrell's the most wonderful writer. She wrote another book called Hamnet about Shakespeare's son and both books are I would really recommend. They're just absolutely beautifully written, hard to put them down. The second book that is also on my table that I've been reading for one, it's called Skoff, and it's a history of food in Britain, food in class in Britain. So it's a really interesting. A lot of short chapters that you can just dip into on subjects as diverse as afternoon tea or gravy or the cornish pasty. So, really, really interesting and, and enjoyable to read. And who who's the author? Great. They sent fantastic recommendations. I'm I'm also currently reading some historical fiction set in the twentieth century, sweet caress by William Boyd. It's the third of his whole life novels. I've read already the the romantic which is a large segment of it based in Italy and any human heart also. So these are basically cradle to the grave fictional biographies, if you like. And in this case, the protagonist is a female war photographer. Wow. That sounds really, really good. Yeah. Highly recommend Yeah. I'll I'll I'll look those out. Okay, Mark. So what's next for you now? I believe you're gonna be in Italy for in Italy. Is that right? Yes. I'm looking forward to that. I'm really looking forward to seeing you to seeing the Italian wine podcast team, and, and, of course, to seeing a lot of wine producers who I've met over the years. It's always an exciting event. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to that very much. Good. Are you delivering, workshop, or are you speaking at the in Italy? Yes. I am. I think, I think I'll be doing a master class, I believe, with professor Shenza. So that will be an honor and a treat to to be on the same platform with him. Wow. Yeah. You're in good company there. Yeah. Finally, then, where where can, listeners get a copy of your big market comes out on the eighteenth of April. Is that right? Yeah. It comes out just a couple of days after, I returned from Vin Italy. So that's the eighteenth of April for the UK edition. The publisher is Hurst. It's available for pre order now already through all of the usual you know, Amazon or Waterstons or or Blackwells. And I have a separate edition, same text exactly. Different cover, coming out in the US and Canada on May twenty first. That's with Melville House, a wonderful, independent publisher, Melville House. Again, I think is available already for preorder. So, hopefully, the book will be easy enough to find. Fantastic. Mark, thank you so much for being my first guest on book club. I'll see you in April at you need to But I'll look forward to that, Richard. I'll look forward to sharing a glass of wine or possibly a glass of Italian beer with you because I know that you have a great knowledge of and love for Italian beers too. I do. It's true. So thank you very much for joining us on the Italian wine podcast book club. Next month, our guest will be Melissa Mueller, and we'll be talking about her cookbook Sicily So please let us know if you've got any questions for Melissa or about Sicily or about wine writing in general. Thanks for your company today. Until next time. Ciao. Ciao, Richard. Thank you. Bye bye. Towermark. Thanks for joining the Italian wine podcast book club, tune in 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 Italianline podcast dot com or wherever you get your pods.