Fernando
We sat down with Fernando to try the wine he made a few months earlier. Jane joined for the harvest and had a chat to talk a bit about life in Cerretino when he was a child.
Fernando and his wife Rita welcomed us into the kitchen of the house they have lived in since they wed. Fernando and Rita were neighbours before marriage, and their families shared many traditions, recipes, and culinary habits.
In their kitchen, the whole family gathers to eat together around a stove once used for both cooking and heating. Fernando shares some of his childhood memories about food and life in the Tuscan countryside.
Fernando, did you have a favorite dish when you were little?
I didn't like pasta. Now there's nothing I don't like, I've even eaten pasta with jam.
But you know what I really like? Polenta insugata. Many layers of soft polenta with sauce and cheese. Very little meat.
Do you remember who made the wine when you were little?
My grandfather made wine in Montevitozzo. Until we split the land we inherited, my brother used to took care of the winemaking process. Then I started doing it myself.
Do you think the wine production process has changed much since you started?
Even just 15 years ago the wine was more sour, lighter, and it had a washed-out color. The color wasn’t as deep as it gets now. I’ve also started to keep some French vine varieties and I have set up sturdy wooden poles about a meter apart, with steel wire stretched between them.
Did you change the layout of the vineyard yourself?
When I started taking care of it, we had very old varieties, those that dated back to when our grandparents planted them, and even the vines were laid out in a different way, as single plants. But I don't like to keep the vineyards like that anymore. No one does around here anymore. To find someone who still keeps individual plants you probably have to go to Umbria.
Has the work one needs to take care of in the vineyard remained the same?
Yes. It's not enough to just pick the grapes and leave. You have to work hard in the vineyard, often under the scorching hot sun. The best period for the plants to grow is when the sun is really hot, and you always have to keep on top of it to prevent it from becoming a forest.
The most tiring part is when you have to remove the extra branches and some excess leaves. It all happens at the worst time for the heat, between May and June. Then it calms down a bit.
There are those who don't take care of the vines, but if you don’t do that you need pesticides to keep them healthy. I always use natural methods. In the past, the copper sulfate was sprayed by hand, now it is done with a tractor and it’s almost a fun pastime.
How long does it take you to manage the whole vineyard?
I have 10 rows of vines and it can take up to two days to do them all. After you remove the excess leaves, you spray the copper sulphate. If you spend a little time on it every day, keeping up with the work is manageable. If you don’t, it grows too fast and you need at least two people to do it.
And when you start to get on in years, you can really feel the fatigue.
What is important to you when you make your wine?
I don't want anything added to it. This is just grape juice. We keep it in steel tanks and however the wine comes out, so be it. We harvest the grapes just outside the door and do every step of the process here ourselves. The grapes are crushed and transferred to the tanks. I press them in the morning and in the evening.
Are you the only one making wine here in Cerretino?
Yes, there are a few others who like the countryside left.
What was life like here in Cerretino back when you were a child?
There were a lot of kids back in the day. We all met down by the fountain and there were also some shops.
Did you grow most of your produce at home or did you buy a lot from the local stores?
Around the 1960s there were two grocery stores here. The first one was Tonina’s, her full name was Antonia, who then passed it on to her daughter Francesca. It was a nice little shop.
Then Velia started a new one down by the fountain and they both were around at the same time.
We never bought in bulk, but we would go three or four times a day. Whenever you needed something you would head down and get it.
What did people mainly buy in these shops?
Pasta and rice. Sugar. For the rest, there were vegetable patches and many people had animals. Sometimes you would even take the eggs from your chickens and exchange those for your shopping.
And what did you usually eat at home?
When my mother was young, we’d eat polenta quite often. Herrings, too, which were very cheap at the time, as was cod. But there has always been little money here in the village. Some people didn't have enough money to buy shoes, but every family had a few sheep and some families had cows.
Did you also take care of the animals when you were kids?
Kids took care of the animals all day long, in turns. At the time, it was common to use half of your land for sowing, and the other half you kept for grazing, but you had to be careful and control the cows to save the wheat from the animals.
And then you still had to go to school.
Was there a school in the village?
I did my first year of elementary school here, across from my house. Then they merged the schools and all the kids were moved to Montevitozzo, where I went until the fifth grade. For the vocational training, later on, you went to Castell'Azzara.
When it didn't rain, I took my bicycle. If it rained, I grabbed my green umbrella and walked for an hour. Morning and afternoon. In winter we would come back at 5:30PM, in the dark. We were a group of three kids from here.
Did you bring food to school?
Luckily, I had a relative who lived near the school. I ate there and I could also leave my schoolbag there. Some years they also introduced school meals.
What did you do once you were done with school?
Once I finished my third year in vocational school, I heard that someone was looking for someone to work on the harvest down in Maremma, in a village called Magliano. I took the bus with nothing but a brown suitcase with a sickle inside. When I got to the last stop, I walked for an hour and a half and then I ran into a man on a motorbike. I asked him for directions and he took me there directly.
The lady I was going to work for was expecting the older guy who had helped them the year before. But instead I showed up, still very young.
How was the first day of work?
They gave me something for breakfast and then they took me out into the vineyard, I remember it very well. There was this man who came from San Sepolcro, he spoke Aretino. He asked me if I wanted to spray the plants or clean up the vineyard. I didn't know how to do either, but I chose to clean up the vineyard. I needed to tie he branches with some reeds, I had to twist hem very tight.
And how did it go?
By lunchtime, I had accomplished very little and done quite a bad job.
I had removed a bit too many of the leaves. I said that everyone did it that way where I was from, but I really didn’t know any better. Once that was over, we started harvesting. And I stayed there for over a month. This was in '60 or '61.
Back then there were no combine harvesters. There was only a rudimental tool you’d drag behind the tractor to tie the wheat. And you had to prepare a path for the tractor to drive through so as not to let it crush the plants.
Did you grow corn for polenta at home too?
Yes, we grew it here behind the house. We plowed and used a tool to make the furrow very tidy, we sowed the corn and then we went back with a hoe to cover it. Here in the hills, however, there were many stones and everything had to be done by hand around those, bit by bit. In the summer I also took care of the hay, while many other boys my age were busy partying.
And how did you get the flour then?
We would take the wheat to the mill. We used to go with a donkey. It happened that you’d have three or four people in line in front of you and you just had to wait, tie the rope and let the donkey stand there. You paid the mill, or sometimes they gave you a discount in exchange for some wheat.
Later, we started using our Bianchina and driving to the mill. We removed the passenger seat to load the bags of semolina and flour.
Was there a problem with wild boars at the time?
Lately, wild boars dig everything up as soon as you sow. The problem started in the 80s.
Before that there were just many hares and a few pheasants.
And how was life working the land? Has it changed a lot over the years?
There was a period, from the 1970s to the 2000s, when you could earn a little money working the land. Up here, however, the land is not great for agriculture; it is much more suitable for grazing. You can only grow a little corn and barley. Some people had large plots of land, but most families had small plots scattered here and there.
Did people keep animals even if they had small plots of land?
We had sheep. They were here near the house. In the morning, I would decide where to take them to graze. I had trained them well: they would go where I directed them to go and they would come back when I called them. But you had to be careful because wolves would attack them.
Have you always had wolves in the area?
When I was a kid, I remember a man chased one away all the way down to Maremma, but you could generally leave the sheep outside even all night. Now, however, you have to be a little careful because wolves roam in packs. Once they entered the enclosure we had, through the two-meter high net we had set up, and killed 14 sheep, all pregnant with two lambs. It was terrible. It happened more than once, but at some point I had enough and I decided to sell them.
At that point, a bottle of new wine appeared on the table for the first taste of the new harvest. It is a bit more acidic than the previous year, with a very refreshing finish.
The care that Fernando puts into maintaining his vineyard pays off at harvest time, when the process of hand-picking the grapes is much smoother as there is no need to remove excess foliage.
Once the harvest is over, we all gather in the kitchen for a lunch together, waiting for the grapes to take center stage again at other lunches and dinners during the winter, bottled and transformed into Fernando's homemade wine.