From the province of Asti

February 6 -- Canelli, province of Asti

I've often made fun of the Italians and their odd attachment to big woolly mufflers tied tight around their necks even in rather mild weather.  I have a new respect for them -- or at least their grandparents and great-grandparents from the countryside of 50-60-70 years ago.

Wait -- let me frame this differently.

You know all the hill towns that characterize just about every part of Italy?  With the picturesque bell towers and castles and so forth? 

Did you ever stop to think that, until maybe 50 years ago, most of their inhabitants spent a great deal of their time and energy climbing up and down all those damnable hills?  For everything they needed, to and from the fields.  To and from market and school.  The post office.  The train station, where there was one, invariably situated at some low point in the valley. To work, to learn, to get away from the shrieking mother and the muttering father.  From the lowing of the cattle and the bleating of the ewes.  From the prying eye of the parish priest.  Etc., etc.

No wonder everybody was so skinny in those neorealist movies.  They were starving AND they were fit!

On the continuation page you'll have some photographic evidence of this, which was assiduously gathered in mud and melting snow on a glorious day.  Or you will have when I get home.  I seem to have forgotten my camera's USB cord. Of course.  Sorry.

The tour was courtesy of Pietro Cirio of the Pianbello winery, Loazzolo, a minute hamlet in a predominantly white-wine zone of Asti province -- still white wines, not spumante, although the Gancia family's HQ is in the nearby town of Canelli. 

By the way, Loazzolo is an almost empty but exceedingly well-maintained place perched safely on a hill.  It's a heartbreakingly beautiful spot where each year another house or two becomes vacant as the old people die off.  The place is so inconvenient for modern living that they have a hard time convincing even the Germans to come and buy the houses for summer use.  After all, who wants to drive 25 kilometers for bread and milk, or farther to rent a DVD to while away another dismal winter evening?

We may deplore this worldwide trend,  But chances are that you, like me, escaped from a small town a long time ago, and for the same mix of economic, social and convenience factors.

Beauty from afar -- that's what you such places have to offer us.  A place that may grace the cover of a travel or wine-lifestyle magazine, or a calendar you pay 15 euros for at the Rialto Bridge in Venice.  But live there?  Can you imagine?  Sadly but honestly...

Deserted houses at Loazzolo.

According to Cirio, much of his zone had few vines until the 1980s. The farmers barely got by with traditional orchard crops, grain and livestock.  For the ones who had the capital and the desire to remain, wine has brought modest wealth.  This is a trend that you see all over Italy -- it's certainly very pronounced in Valpolicella and Tuscany -- which is to uproot old orchards, fields, etc., and replace them with vineyards.  This form of agriculture can verge dangerously on monoculture, ironically making the people on the land more dependent than ever on the vagaries of international markets, currency fluctuations and, indeed, EU regulations intended to protect the environment as well as the competitiveness of entrenched producers.

Comments

[Sandra]

Che gioia rivederti Uncle Terry!
:-***

[AC]

Hint:

The charger for you blackberry has a cord that detaches? sometimes ( like with Sony and Nikon cameras) it can be used.

[l'Ambasciatore]

Doesn't fit the hole, old boy.

As so often happens in life.