For Even As Gregorovius Says That The Smallest Italian
Community Possesses Its Duly Informed Antiquarian, If You Can But Put
Your hand upon him, so, I may be allowed to add, every little place
hereabouts can boast of at least
One individual who will give you good
wine, provided - provided you go properly to work to find him.
Now although, when young, the Calabrian Bacchus has a wild-eyed beaute
du diable which appeals to one's expansive moods, he already begins to
totter, at seven years of age, in sour, decrepit eld. To pounce upon him
at the psychological moment, to discover in whose cool and cobwebby
cellar he is dreaming out his golden summer of manhood - that is what a
foreigner can never, never hope to achieve, without competent local aid.
To this end, I generally apply to the priests; not because they are the
greatest drunkards (far from it; they are mildly epicurean, or even
abstemious) but by reason of their unrivalled knowledge of
personalities. They know exactly who has been able to keep his liquor of
such and such a year, and who has been obliged to sell or partially
adulterate it; they know, from the confessional of the wives, the why
and wherefore of all such private family affairs and share, with the
chemist, the gift of seeing furthest into the tangled web of home life.
They are "gialosi," however, of these acquirements, and must be
approached in the right spirit - a spirit of humility. But if you
tactfully lead up to the subject by telling of the manifold hardships of
travel in foreign lands, the discomfort of life in hostelries, the food
that leaves so much to be desired and, above all, the coarse wine that
is already beginning, you greatly fear, to injure your sensitive spleen
(an important organ, in Calabria), inducing a hypochondriacal tendency
to see all the beauties of this fair land in an odious and sombre
light - turning your day into night, as it were - it must be an odd
priest, indeed, who is not compassionately moved to impart the desired
information regarding the whereabouts of the best vino di famiglia at
that moment obtainable.
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