previously published in Wine Reveries from the Porch - by Giordano Venturi
At a quarter to ten, as the bells started to ring in celebration, the church doors opened and we flooded out into the bright light, squinting our eyes, looking for our friends. It was warm. It was a great day for the village and we were feeling good in our Sunday best. I never understood why the 9 o'clock mass was called the "youth mass" as we "youths" really liked to sleep in on a Sunday morning after a rather late Saturday night, but we gladly made the sacrifice, as this was really a much shorter version of the other regular masses.
We gathered by the church's six door steps watching the girls, much more in their Sunday best than we were, descend the stairs in a flutter of skirts, removing their head veils. When this event was over, we started debating whether to go to the bridge and watch more girls, now parading in twos or threes, hoping to catch a smile or the tiniest of encouragements. The alternative was the much more common Sunday-morning-after-mass-occupation: a manly game of pool at the Christian Club, our sleeves rolled up, tie loosened a bit, a cigarette casually dangling from our lips and our Camparis lined up on the window sill.
St. John is the Patron Saint of the "lower" parish and this particular morning was the 24th of June, St. John's Day, a great occurrence, perhaps even the greatest event of the year. Except, maybe, for the St. Louis feast of the "other parish" (the enemy in some quarters), whose fireworks always had to be reckoned with as their power broke more windows than ours did. While we excitedly talked and showed off a bit, part of the conversation from another group reached my ears and somehow prompted me to pay attention. It was "them", the ones with a "culture" or the ones with the money or the titles: the lawyer's or the doctor's son, or merely the son of the richest man in the village. And then there was "us", the ones without all of that, separated by an invisible barrier as solid as a brick wall. We knew our place and our dreams had to be constrained within these boundaries. We knew our limitations. Romano, the lawyer's son, was saying ".... it's the latest cut of the Brandenburgs and done with period instruments! You simply have to hear it!" And then suddenly he looked my way, almost surprised at having caught me eavesdropping. After some hesitation, he said: "Why don't you come along, too?" I looked at my friends, but they turned away and Illias said in a low voice: "Let's go play pool, guys." I stood there undecided, then I followed Romano and his group. Now, he and his friends simply ignored me. As I kept some distance, I wondered what a "brandenburg" was.
The villa was surrounded by cedars of Lebanon, huge red beeches and other exotic trees and the play of shade and light looked fantastic on the gravelled wide path leading to the entrance. Inside, in the music room, Romano put on the first record. I looked around at the beautifully polished furniture, the crystal decanter surrounded by engraved glasses and the massive black piano, its lid down, some music sheets in an apparently carefully arranged disarray on its seat. The bells were still ringing happily in the distance, seemingly in unison with the lacy white curtains softly billowing in the breeze. I was glad I was there; it felt good and oddly comfortable. And then the first notes of Number 3 started chasing each other, leaping from wall to wall in an enchanting game. I had never heard music like that. As I sat in the little padded chair by the fireplace, the door opened and Romano's mother entered, carrying a silver tray full of small cordial glasses, each filled with an amber liquid. So we sat there, almost transfixed, listening to the concerts for what seemed a very long time, sipping that sweet and yet tart liqueur, and dreaming.
In the summer of ‘93, my mother said very matter-of-factly, during one of my regular phone calls to her in Italy, "By the way, you remember Romano? Of course you remember him. He passed away last week." I hadn't thought of Romano for years. And I remembered, suddenly so vividly, that first encounter with Bach and that beguiling liqueur; I was sixteen then.
It wasn't until the fall of 1993 that the revelation came when I tasted some of the young balsamic vinegar juice. It seemed so familiar, with its taste of burnt sugar and wood and the lingering sweetness together with a tingle on the sides of the throat. I recognized it suddenly, as the first notes of the Brandenburg Concerto Number 3 leapt to life in my head: St. John's Day, eight months after the harvest; the sweet juice, stolen from the vinegar's share and fermented on its own; and then drinking it, almost as a celebration, a hint, an idea of what the balsam will be in 12 years, or 20 years, or more; a final statement of life's endurance in the face of uncertainty.
We, too, began stealing a small quantity of the concentrated juice to ferment and to share. The name of the first release, "La Rocca", was chosen to commemorate the old castle built in 1210 in Spilamberto, still standing guard against the Bolognesi from the other side of the river, somewhat more friendly these days. Later vintages, fermented in old French oak for a full year, then transferred to newer barrels for additional ageing, were renamed No.3 for the concerto so vivid in my memory. And now, finally, I can capture that wonderful tradition that was part of so many families of long ago, that fascinating, unreachable something that I could only dream about as I sat on that little chair and listened.
