Under the Tuscan Sun

by Frances Mayes

  Along the way we plan to taste as much of the Maremma cuisine as possible, bake in the sun, track down other Etruscan sites. Ever since reading D.H. Lawrence's Etruscan Places years ago, I have wanted to see the ancient diving boy, the flute player in his sandals, the crouching panthers, to experience the mysterious verve and palpable joie de vivre hidden underground all those centuries. For several days we've plotted our route. This seems like a journey into the far interior, though, in reality, it's only about a hundred miles from our house to Tarquinia, where acres and acres of Etruscan tombs are still being explored. Time keeps bending on me here. The density of things to see in Tuscany makes me lose sight of our California sense of distance and freeway training, where Ed drives fifty miles to work. A week will be short. The area called the Maremma, moorland, is no longer swampy. The last of the marshy waters were long since drained off. Its history of killing malaria, however, kept this southwestern stretch of Tuscany relatively unpopulated. It's the land of the butteri, cowboys, of the only unsettled piece of coast along the Tyrrhenian, and of wide-open spaces interrupted only by small stone huts where shepherds used to shelter.

  Soon we arrive in Montalcino, a town built for broad views along a bony ridge of hills. The eye seems to stop before the waving green landscape does. Small wine shops line the street. A table with white cloth and a few wineglasses waits right inside each door, as though inviting you in for an intimate drink with the proprietor and a toast to the great vintages.

  The hotel in town is modest, indeed, and I'm alarmed that the electrical switches for the bathroom are located in the shower. I aim the showerhead as far into the opposite corner as possible and splash as little as possible. I do not want to fry before tasting the local wines! Compensation is our panorama of the tile rooftops and into the countryside. The belle époque café in the center of town doesn't appear to have changed an iota since 1870—marble tables, red velvet banquettes, gold mirrors. The waitress polishing the bar has cupid-bow lips and a starchy white blouse with ribbons on the sleeves. What could be more sensuous than a lunch of prosciutto and truffles on schiacciata, a flat bread like focaccia, with salt and olive oil, along with a glass of Brunello? The utter simplicity and dignity of Tuscan food!

  After siesta, we walk to the fourteenth-century fortezza, now a fantastic enoteca. In the old lower part, which used to store crossbows and arrows, cannons and gunpowder, all the wines of the area are available for tasting. It's brilliantly sunny outside. In the fortezza, the light is dim, the stone walls musky and cool. Vivaldi is playing while we try a couple of good whites from Banfi and Castelgiocondo vineyards. Appropriately, the music changes to Brahms as we taste the dark Brunellos from several vineyards: Il Poggiolo, Case Basse, and the granddaddy of all Brunello, Biondi. Brilliant, totally evolved wines that make me want to rush to a kitchen and prepare the kind of hearty food they deserve. I can't wait to cook for these wines—rabbit roasted with balsamic vinegar and rosemary, chicken with forty cloves of garlic, pears simmered in wine and served with mascarpone. The man serving us insists that we try some dessert wines. We fall for one called simply “B” and another Moscadello from Tenuta Il Poggione. The enologist must have been a former perfume maker. No dessert would be needed with these, except perhaps a white peach, just ripe. On second thought, a lemon soufflé might be just the touch of heaven. Or my old Southern favorite, crème brÛlée. We buy a few bottles of the luxurious Brunellos. Just the memory of the price at home makes us indulgent. At Bramasole, we have good wine storage in two spaces under the stone stairs. We can shove cases in, lock the door, and start taking them out in a few years. Since long-term planning is not a strong suit of either of us, we buy a couple of cases of less costly Rosso di Montalcino, drinkable now, in fact, smooth and full bodied. I doubt if the dessert wines will be around by the end of summer.

  In late afternoon we drive the few miles to Sant'Antimo, one of those places that feels as if it must be built on sacred ground. From a distance, you see it over in a field of manicured olives, a pale travertine Romanesque abbey, starkly simple and pure in style. It does not look Italian. When Charlemagne passed this way, his soldiers were struck by an epidemic and Charlemagne prayed for it to stop. He promised to found an abbey if his prayer was granted and in 781 he built a church. Perhaps it is the heritage that gives the present church, built in 1118, its slender French lines. We arrive as vespers begin. Only a dozen people are here and three of these are women fanning themselves and chatting just behind us. Usually, the habit of regarding the church as an extension of the living room or piazza charms me, but today I turn and stare at them because the five Augustinian monks who strode in and took up their books have begun the Gregorian chant of this hour. The lofty, unadorned church amplifies their voices and the late lambent sun turns the travertine translucent. The music is piercing to my ear, as some birds' songs that almost can hurt. Their voices seem to roll and break, then part and converge on downward humming tones. The chanting disengages my mind, releases it from logic. The mind goes swimming and swims through large silence. The chant is buoyant, basic, a river to ride. I think of Gary Snyder's lines:

  stay together

  learn the flowers

  go light

  I glance at Ed and he is staring up into the pillars of light. But the women are unmoved; perhaps they come every day. In the middle, they saunter noisily out, all three talking at once. If I lived here, I'd come every day, too, on the theory that if you don't feel holy here, you never will. I'm fascinated by the diligence of the monks performing this plainsong for the six liturgical hours of every day, beginning with lodi, prayers of praise, at seven A.M., and ending with compieta, compline, at nine. I would like to come back for a whole day and listen. I see in the brochure that those on spiritual retreat can stay in guest quarters and eat at a nearby convent. We walk around the outside, admiring the stylized hooved creatures supporting the roof.

  A cool evening to ride over dirt roads admiring the land, sniffing like a dog out the window the fresh country smells of dry hay. We arrive at Sant'Angelo in Colle, a restaurant operated by Poggio Antico vineyards. A wedding party is in uproarious progress and all the waitresses are enjoying the action. We're put in a back room alone, with the rousing party echoing around us. We don't mind. A stone sink is piled with ripe peaches, scenting the room. We order thick onion soup, roast pigeon, potatoes with rosemary, and what else, the house's Brunello.

  WILDEST TUSCANY IS SOMEWHAT OF AN OXYMORON. The region, as a whole, has been tamed for centuries. Every time I dig in the garden, I'm reminded of how many have gone before me on the land. I have a big collection of fragments of dishes, dozens of patterns, so many that I wonder if other women fling their dishes into the garden. Crockery colanders, edges of lids, delicate cup handles, and assorted pieces of plates gradually have collected on an outdoor tabletop, along with jawbones of a boar and a hedgehog. The land has been trod and retrod. A glance at terraced farming shows how the hills have been reshaped for the convenience and survival of humans. Still, the Maremma area remained, until less than a hundred years ago, a low coastal plain inhabited by cowboys, shepherds, and mosquitoes. Its mal aria was definitely associated with chills and fever. Farmhouses are occasional whereas the rest of Tuscany is dotted with them. The Renaissance touched lightly here; towns, generally, are not permeated with monumental examples of architecture and adorned by the great names in painting. The bad air, now soft and fresh, probably kept the extensive Etruscan tombs safer. Although many were recklessly pillaged, an astonishing number remain. Were Etruscans immune to malaria? All evidence shows that the area was quite populated in their time.

  Our next base is a villa, now a small hotel, on the Acquaviva vineyard property outside Montemerano. Ed has cased the Gambero Rosso guide and spotted this tiny village with three excellent restaurants. Since it is central for most of what we want to see, we decide to stay put for a few days rather than checking in and out of hotels. A tree-lined drive leads to a park-sized garden with shady pla
ces to sit outside and look over the rolling vineyards. We have a room right on the garden. I push open the shutters and the window fills with blue hydrangea. We quickly unpack and take off again; we can relax later.

  Pitigliano must be the strangest town in Tuscany. Like Orvieto, it sits on top of a tufa mass. But Pitigliano looks like a drip castle, a precipitous one looming above a deep gorge. Who could look down, while trying to see the town and the road at the same time? Tufa isn't the strongest rock in the world, and sections of it sometimes weaken, erode, or veer off. Pitigliano's houses rise straight up; they're literally living on the edge. The tufa beneath the houses is full of caves—perhaps for the storage of the area's Bianco di Pitigliano, a wine that must derive its astringent edge from the volcanic soil. In town, the bartender tells us that many of the caves were Etruscan tombs. Besides wine, oil is stored and animals are housed. Medieval towns have a dark and twisted layout; this town's feels darker, more twisted. Many Jews settled here in the fifteenth century; it was outside the realm of the Papal States, who were busy persecuting. The area where they lived is called a ghetto. Whether there was a strict ghetto here, as there was in Venice, where Jews had to keep to a curfew, had their own government and cultural life, I don't know. The synagogue is closed for reconstruction but it does not appear that anything much is happening. Almost everything seems to be for sale. In this life or the next, some of the rim houses are going to find themselves in the gorge. Perhaps this contributes to the gloomy feel the town gives me. On the way out, we buy a few bottles of the local white for our growing collection. I ask how many Jews lived there during World War II. “I don't know, signora, I'm from Naples.” Winding downhill, I read in a guidebook that the Jewish community was exterminated in the war. I'd never trust a guidebook on a fact and hope that this is wrong.

  Tiny Sovana, nearby, has the feeling of a ghost town in California, except that the few houses along the main street are immensely old. People are outnumbered, it seems, by Etruscan tombs built into the hillsides. We spot a sign and pull over. A path takes us into a murky wooded area with a stagnant stream just made for female anopheles mosquitoes. Soon we're scrambling on slippery paths, up along a steep hillside. We begin to see the tombs—tunnels into the hills, stony passageways leading back, probably to vipers. The entrances in that wildness look undisturbed for the centuries. Nothing is attended—no tickets sold, no guides waiting; it is as though you discover these strange haunted sepulchers yourself. Vines dangle, as in the Mayan jungles around Palenque, and the eroded carvings in the tufa also have that strangely Eastern aspect that many of the Mayan carvings have, as though long ago art was the same everywhere. It's very clear that becoming an Etruscan archaeologist is a good move. Endless areas are awaiting further investigation. We climb for hours, encountering only a large white cow standing up to its knees in the stream. When we emerge, I have bleeding scratches on my legs but not a single mosquito bite. I have the feeling that this is a place I will think about on nights of insomnia. Down the road, we see another sign. This points to the remains of a temple, which looks carved out of the tufa hillside. We walk among eerie arches and columns, partly excavated and looking quite abandoned. Those Etruscans are going to stay mysterious. What did they do here? An Art in the Park summer concert series? Strange rites? The guidebooks refer to this as a temple, and perhaps here in the center a wise person practiced haruspication, the art of divining by reading a sheep's liver. A bronze model of one was found near Piacenza, with the liver divided into sixteen parts. It is thought that the Etruscans similarly divided the sky, and that the way the liver was sectioned also determined the layout of Etruscan towns. Who knows? Perhaps the forerunners of talk shows held forth here or it was the market for seafood. In places such as Machu Picchu, Palenque, Mesa Verde, Stonehenge, and now here, I always have the odd and somber consciousness of how time peels us off, how irretrievable the past really is, especially in these hot spots where you sense some matrix of the culture took place. We can't help but push our own interpretations on them. It's a deep wish of philosophers and poets to search for theories of eternal return and time past being time present. Bertrand Russell was closer when he said the universe was created five minutes ago. We can't recover the slightest gesture of those who chopped out this rock, not the placing of the first stone, the lighting of a fire to make lunch, the stirring of a pot, the sniffing of an underarm, the sigh after lovemaking, niente. We can walk here, the latest little dots on the time line. Knowing that, it always amazes me that I am intensely interested in how the map is folded, where the gas gauge is pointed, whether we have withdrawn enough cash, how everything matters intensely even as it is disappearing.

  We've seen enough for the day but can't resist a walk through ancient Sorano, also poised on an endangered tufa mass. There seem to be no tourists in this whole area. Even the roads are empty. Sorano looks the same way it did in 1492, when Columbus found America. The last building must have gone up around then. There's a somber feel to the narrow streets, a gray light that comes off the dark stone, but the people seem extraordinarily friendly. A potter sees us looking in and insists that we visit his workshop. When we buy two peaches, the man rinsing off his crates of grapes with a hose gives us a bunch. “Speciale!” he tells us. Two people stop to help us out of a tight parking place, one gesturing come on, the other gesturing stop.

  We're dusty and worn out as we pull into our parking spot near Acquaviva's garden. Before dinner, we shower, change, and take glasses of their own white wine, a Bianco di Pitigliano, out to the comfortable chairs and watch the sun drop behind the hill, just as two Etruscans might have in this exact place.

  Montemerano is only a few minutes away, a high castle town, beautiful and small.

  It has its requisite fifteenth-century church with the requisite Madonna—this one with a difference. It's entitled Madonna della Gattaiola, Madonna of the Cat Hole. The bottom part of the painting had a hole to let the cat out of the church. Everyone in town seems to be outside. A few local boys and men are playing some jazz right in the center of town. The woman running the bar slams the door. Apparently she's heard enough. Absolutely everyone stares when a tall and gorgeous man in riding boots and a tight T-shirt strides by. But he's aloof, takes no notice. I see him check out his image in the shop windows he passes.

  We're ravenous. As soon as the magic hour of seven-thirty arrives and the restaurant opens the door, we rush in. We're the only ones in Enoteca dell'Antico Frantoio, a former olive mill, now remodeled to the extent that it looks like a reproduction of itself. Although it has lost its authentic feel, the result is rather like an airy Napa Valley restaurant, so we feel quite at home. The menu, however, reveals the Maremma roots: Acquacotta, served all over Tuscany, is a particular local specialty, the “cooked water” soup of vegetables with an egg served on top; testina di vitella e porcini sott'olio, veal head and porcini mushrooms under olive oil; pappardelle al ragù di lepre, broad pasta with ragù made of hare; cinghiale in umido alle mele, smoked boar with apples. In trattorie over most of Tuscany, menus are almost interchangeable: the usual pastas with ragù, butter and sage, pesto, or tomato and basil, the standard selection of grilled and roasted meats, the contorni usually consisting of fried potatoes, spinach, and salad. No one seems interested in varying the classics of the cuisine. In this less settled, less travelled region, the cuisine of Tuscany is closer to its origins, the hunter bringing home the kill, the farmer using every part of the animal, the peasant woman making soup with a handful of vegetables and an egg. Usually you do not find the above items; nor do you see capretto, kid, or fegatello di cinghiale, boar liver sausage, on menus. The Frantoio has its more delicate side, too: ravioli di radicchio rosso e ricotta, ravioli with red radicchio and ricotta, and sformato di carciofi, a mold of baked artichoke. We start with crostini di polenta con pure di funghi porcini e tartufo, polenta squares with a purée of porcini and truffles—rich and savory. Ed orders the rabbit, roasted with tomatoes, onions, and garlic, and I bravely ord
er the kid. It's delicious. The wine of the region is the Morellino di Scansano, black as the wine of Cahors, a discovery for us. This enoteca's own is the Banti Morellino, big and accomplished. Now I'm really happy.

  In the morning, I have one of the favorite experiences of my life. We get up at five and go to the hot waterfall near Saturnia. No one is there at that hour, although the hotel manager warned us of crowds later in the day. Pale blue but clear water cascades over tufa, which the falls have hollowed out in many places, forming perfect places to sit down and let the warm water flow over and around you. When I first heard of the falls, I thought we might emerge smelling like old Easter eggs, but the sulphur is mild. The current has enough force so that you feel massaged, not enough to sweep you away. Bliss. Where are the water nymphs? Whatever it is supposed to cure, I'm sure it does. After an hour I feel as though I have no bones in my body. I am utterly relaxed, limp, speechless. We leave just as two cars pull up. Back at Acquaviva, we have breakfast on the terrace: fresh orange juice, nut bread, toast, something like pound cake, and pots of coffee and warm milk. It's hard to leave. Only the lure of the Etruscans stirs us to pick up our map and go.