Recycling the South
One Man's Annual Crusade to Reimagine the South of Italy's, From Seasonal Beach Towns, to the Purveyor of the World's Greatest Food, Wine and Extra-Virgin Oil.
Palermo: Nino's Salty Wines (cont.)

He cleans some fresh sardines that smell like a cross between butter and cucumbers, mixed with a little seawater. What they didn't smell like is fish.

Nino opens his Catarratto, a dry savoury wine he makes near Marsala. Although it's one of the grapes that go into Marsala, his wines are more modern, more everyday.

A couple handfuls of pasta hit the water as Gina slips a Mina CD into the player. It's 1959, and as you know,
Mina is love-lorn.

Angela starts to sway her hips while stirring the pot.

The finochietto hits the pan. The perfume increases 10 times. Raisins. Pine nuts. A little tomato paste. What's surprising is that with all the smells, none of them speak 'fish'.

A little raw oil and plates are passed around.

He opens a bottle of his Grillo, and again, the salty tastes emerge immediately. Sipidità, in Italian. If most wines are fruity, Nino's wines are savoury, a concept that I always find intriguing.

We linger over the amber plates as he opens a third bottle, a dry moscato.

When the tiny oven 'dings', we plate the mackeral and another drizzle of raw oil. I take a sip of the moscato. Rather than matching the fish, it counterplays it, the same way, or rather the opposite, of how a salty cheese compliments a sweet wine. It's fantastic.

After lunch he and I sit on the terrace and talk about wine, the south and how the rest of the world sees both.

A few hours later it's an emotional goodbye, as good friends, 6-bottle and 5-hour lunches tend to produce.

A few hours later I'd wake up from a nap, long after dark, and I'd slowly begin to wash the dishes. It would be Mina again, just the two of us. I'd fill the tiny sink with soapy water and think about Nino and his wine. But most of all I'd think about my tiny, little 40-year old car back in Lecce and how I had left the back seat full of bottles of wine, olive oil and homemade pickles. Salami too. And that was just for a trip to the bank.

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To find out how to acquire some of Nino's wine, you can write him at vinibarraco@libero.it.

Fotografie e testo, Silvestro Silvestori, Marzo, 2009, Lecce, Italia.