✒ Book Review – South of Somewhere
▴ South of Somewhere, by Robert V. Camuto; University of Nebraska Press
The title sounds whimsical, but though there’s an affable tone to this intelligently charming wine book, it’s a serious account of winemaking in southern Italy, essays that can best be categorized as “down to earth,” in every sense. They’re a welcome relief from the Olympian pronouncements, judgements, and scorekeeping that clutter so much wine discourse these days; this is simply a welcome exercise in true wine appreciation.
That, of course, is a broad broom that sweeps in a wide range of detritus, some pleasant, some difficult. Nowhere is that tangle more dramatic than Italy, especially in the south, and so that’s where the good stories are, as the author, an American wine writer whose family came from near Naples, discovered and immersed himself in. “All roads may once have led to Rome,” he writes, “but ever since, Italy has been about the detours – and the detours in the detours.” He lives in genteel Verona, a columnist for The Wine Spectator, but in his view, the ragged, tumultuous Italian south is “vital to the wine world.”
Economic blight and lack of innovation may have been beneficial unintended consequences, he points out: Old vines on phylloxera-free volcanic soils have created genetically rich vineyard areas, a unique resource for a generation of “educated, environmental, and open-minded winemakers” returning to their ancestral roots. Italy makes more wine from more grape varieties than any other country in the world, and much of it’s getting better all the time (in fact, some always was, as lucky locals know.)
Of course, those high-minded youngsters still have to deal with their elders, which leads to operatically lively talk around the dinner tables, cafes, and especially vineyards, as Camuto takes us along the back roads of Calabria, Abruzzo, Campania, Puglia, Sicily and other often unheralded regions, and discovers that detours are no bad thing, especially when lubricated with native wines (well described, though of course colloquially). This is not the usual account of visits to grand chateaux, with splendid meals and wines we can’t afford, it’s the reality of wine, vividly and cheerfully conveyed – good stories, worth a listen. Take it from someone who never says no to a glass of Frappato in Sicily: Bravo!
Brian St. Pierre
South of Somewhere, by Robert V. Camuto; University of Nebraska Press, $24.95. (Amazon)
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