Torches in the vineyards
Plus Stradivarius adventures and a virtual Uffizi exhibit
From 27 degrees to minus 8 in the space of a week. It has been a cruel April so far. No, this is not just a personal whinge about the weather. It’s actually serious news given the impact freezing temperatures can have on agriculture at this crucial time of the year. Italy’s southern regions, thankfully, are protected from the cold. In the centre and north, however, early morning frost has been destroying flowers and plants over the past few days. This is bad for summer fruits like peaches and plums, not to mention the native bee population. Grapes are the worst hit of all. Wine producers from the Apennines to Piemonte have been forced to work night shifts, keeping watch over burning pyres which provide just enough warmth to protect the crop. Big estates can just about manage this. But smaller producers have been devastated. Some have already lost the entire year’s work. So wherever you are, if you’re thinking about buying some Italian wine, please do whatever you can to support independent businesses from affected regions. This crisis couldn’t have come at a worse time for them.
From ‘sexy supermarket shopping’, to gameshows that pitch ‘natives’ against ‘foreigners’, Italian TV is notoriously tasteless. This week, though, the popular ‘comedy’ programme Striscia la notizia, raised the stakes with a particularly nauseating display of racism. During a segment on China, the two presenters, Michelle Hunziker and Gerry Scotti (a former MP), decided it was an opportune moment to dust-off the good old fashioned ‘slanty eyes’ gag. I don’t have the time or patience to explain why this is offensive here. Actually, I considered not sharing the story at all out of sheer disgust. After some reflection, though, I decided it was important, if only to amplify a response I read on twitter by the journalist Louis Pisano: “I hope this opens up people’s eyes to what has really been going on in Italy for years. It’s not all pizza, pasta and Prada.” No. It most certainly is not.
Arts and culture: the sound of Klezmer
Last weekend I published a piece in the Guardian about Helena Attlee’s fascinating new book Lev’s Violin. Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of Attlee’s work and The Land Where Lemons Grow (2014) in particular. Her latest book, while more anomalous, and not tied so strictly to Italy, didn’t disappoint. The premise is simple: the author traipses around Lombardy, Tuscany, Abruzzo, and other parts of Italy and Europe in an effort to re-construct the ‘biography’ of a musical instrument that she, and others, believe to be a possible-Stradivarius. Really, though, this puzzle is an excuse for a more general historical and literary adventure, which incorporates elements of memoir and travel journalism too. You can read my review for some more in depth and developed thoughts, but I strongly recommend you buy the book here to find out more...
For any readers dying to get back into Italy’s museums I have a small-ish nugget of good news. Florence’s Uffizi Galleries launched a virtual exhibition this week entitled ‘Empresses, matrons, freedwomen. Faces and secrets of ancient Rome.’ The show was actually supposed to open in November; indeed technically it did, but only for a day. Given Covid-19 limitations are here to stay for the foreseeable future, however, the curators have bitten the bullet and set up an online interactive version. If you click on this link, you can walk around the museum, admiring busts of Agrippina, Domizia Longina and other famous women of the ancient Roman world as you go. It’s a fascinating subject, I think, and the captions and so on are as well-written and informative as you’d expect from one of Italy’s leading museums. This is actually the first time the Uffizi has tried something so ambitious with regards to digitisation, and it’s good to see them pull it off with such panache. It’s also further confirmation, as if it were needed, of the rejuvenating impact Eike Schmidt, the Director, is having on the institution.
Recipe of the week: Marò
Over the past few weeks I’ve become obsessed with Ligurian food. The region’s cuisine is herbaceous and grassy thanks to its unique, balmy microclimate, and it also includes plenty of fish, seafood, mushrooms, chickpeas and fruit. A perfect balance for this turbulent start to spring. The other day as I sat down to read an old classic, Flavours of the Riviera (1996) by Colman Andrews, I came across a recipe for marò, a fava bean and mint pesto, which I’d never heard of before. Andrews includes anchovies in his version, which is a nice touch, but I’m told they aren’t necessary. Curiosity piqued, I whipped up a ‘Portofino style pasta’, with some flash fried prawns and trofie which I cooked risotto-style in a quick stock made from the shells before adding the pesto at the end. It was lovely. I can confirm, though, that the marò itself could happily work on its own, on a crostino, or tossed through gnocchi. If you don’t have Andrew’s book, I recommend experimenting with this decent-looking vegetarian version which should do the trick nicely.
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About Me
My name is Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) and I’m an author, editor and translator based in Florence. I’ve been writing about Italy for a decade for international media including The Guardian, The Economist, Frieze, and Art Review. I launched ‘The Week in Italy’ to share a more direct and regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds.
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