Drink Up

Years back a pipe burst in our apartment bathroom in San Marino. Three thousand miles away, we got the news: a trickle of water had found its way into Mr. and Mrs. Riccardi’s apartment below ours and continued to flow until the water to our unit was shut off completely. Repairs would be needed. It was an opportunity. Fix the leak, yes, and why not re-do the bathroom? That’s what we did.

Of course all that meant a lot of work: demolition, by a worker they call a “muratore,” a wall (and floor) man conversant with cement; then plumbing, tile, electrical, and carpentry work. It took weeks, procuring materials, scheduling the work, being there and not there (you couldn’t live in an apartment with no running water). Since then I’ve thought of those ads you see in travel magazines: buy an apartment in Italy for a dollar or a euro. How easy it sounds. What about restoration? I lived through that process on a small scale. It was not easy.

The job required my living for a few weeks ala agriturismo, in a bed and board place ten minutes from the apartment. Board was dinner every night, lots of good grub. And lots of good wine. On one end of the dining room was a wall with ceramic pitchers hung on pegs. And two spigots, one for sangiovese, one for cabernet. You grabbed a pitcher, filled it, and went to your table. The wine tasted great. At the agritour, they were like, Have all you want. We’ll make more. It was quaffing wine, slurping wine, uncomplicated, great with food. The grapes were grown in vineyards just outside the door. This, I realized, was vino sfuso. Wine from the barrel. I’d been enjoying it for years. Now I knew what it was.

I thought of vino sfuso recently–correction, I think of vino sfuso all the time–just back from our most recent stay over there. We drive and eat all over the Marecchia Valley and the low Apennine hills when we’re in San Marino. Much of the arable land is given over to olive groves and vineyards. Wine production is bread and butter, both a significant part of the local economy and a quality-of-life factor in the home.  

It was quaffing wine, slurping wine, uncomplicated, great with food. The grapes were grown in vineyards just outside the door.

In restaurants, the trattoria and osteria there and all over Italy, house wine is often vino sfuso. You order by the glass, by the quarter- and half-liter, or by the liter. It’s cheap and dry and, significantly, lower in alcohol content than bottled wine. It’s also lower in alcohol content than American wine. You notice the difference. For a decade I took people to Italy on 7-10 day excursions focused on local culture and what I called “heroic eating.” On the part of a few travelers on every trip, there was also some heroic drinking involved. Every morning at breakfast, a reveler would testify, “I drank all that wine last night and I’m not hung over.” Wasn’t that great?

It is great, as close as you can get to no-fault wine.

In Rimini, whose backstreets we frequently walk and drive, you’ll see signs in storefronts: Vino Sfuso. Stop in with your bottles and jugs. Fill ‘er up. That’s been the story for hundreds of years over there. According to the news magazine The Florentine, as far back as the 15th century, surplus wine in Italy has been a problem and a boon, depending on your point of view. There’s simply so much wine.  So. Much. Wine. Produced by land-owning families, who would keep the best of the wine for themselves, when the tanks ran over, the spillage, the excess wine was sold off in the cities, where common folk could buy it at bargain basement prices at “wine windows.” Today in Florence, near Piazza della Signoria, you can belly up to the bar at Fratellini, one of those “wine windows,” and enjoy a glass of wine on your feet, the way, for hundreds of years, residents would pass by with their jugs for a refill. 

In the US, as far as I know, vino sfuso is not a thing. In the summer of 2010 we went on a vineyard crawl in California with friends. We tasted a lot of the good stuff. When we took a break for lunch, I wondered what we would find in restaurants. Local wine, for sure. At reduced prices? (After all, it was made two miles away.) No reduced prices. No house wine. No vino sfuso. 

Home from Italy now for two weeks, I am nostalgic for that simple pleasure. In the US, wine is not cheap. (In San Marino I pay 5 euros at the grocery store for a bottle of sangiovese I find totally satisfying.) And in the US, to satisfy the American consumer who likes the complexity and clout of a big red wine, the average alcohol content approaches 14 percent. Many wines exceed that level. Thinking vino sfuso, at Costco recently I looked at inexpensive American reds, checking price, checking ABV. Nothing below 13.5 percent. Then I remembered–the box. Kirkland’s three-liter box of cabernet sauvignon. Inside the box, a plastic bag. Wine in a bag in a box. On the side of the box, a tap. The box wine was on a pallet around the corner from the bottled stuff, over there next to car batteries and folding chairs. 

I looked: ABV was 13 percent. 

Hello.

Could I get any closer to vino sfuso? I couldn’t see how. 

I bought a box of it, recalling, when I did, my father-in-law’s cellar, which I occasionally visited after Tizi and I got married, seeing the cases of gallon-jug wines he bought and decanted, CK Mondavi, Fortissimo, Cribari, wines he poured at the table and cut with water, as Italians are inclined to do. At that point I was a graduate of the university of Boone’s Farm. I had known the fruity bouquet of Ripple Pagan Pink. I found I could love those jugs. 

And in the US, to satisfy the American consumer who likes the complexity and clout of a big red wine, the average alcohol content approaches 14 percent. Many wines exceed that level.

Back home from Costco I read up on the box wine I had just bought.  And found this blessing, this paean offered by the wine critics at Tasting: 

Indigo color. Aromas and flavors of black cherries and vanilla, fresh wet coffee grounds and cocoa nibs, grilled peppers, and crushed violets with a medium-to-full body and a medium-to-long finish revealing accents of grilled black cherries, leather and peppers, five spice, and potting soil. A rock solid Cabernet with great pairing versatility; grab a bottle for the picnic with your friends this weekend.

I opened the box, pinched the tap, and tasted. I noticed color, not indigo, more the color of red wine. I tasted again, thinking I might actually try to count the spices for myself. About that potting soil finish. Really? I missed that.

In 1970 a bottle of Boones Farm cost a dollar. Adjusted for inflation, that bottle of apple or strawberry wine would cost $7.50 today. The box? Three liters, equivalent to four bottles, rings up at less than $3.50 a bottle. That definitely seems like progress.  

The wine is more than satisfactory. It’s good. I visit the box down in my dinky cellar space, on a shelf next to the tuna fish and Trader Joe’s cherries. When I cook lunch, between 11:45 and 12 noon, I go downstairs and draw a glass. Walking upstairs, lightly jostling the wine in its glass, I think I detect a bouquet. In Italy I could drink vino sfuso every day, before, with, and after food. In the case of the box, so far I have yet to slurp. In fact, I find I usually do not want a second glass. 

When you think about it, that’s probably a good thing.