Every Day in Tuscany and Etruscan civilization and wine

While browsing at Carnegie Library online site to look for an eBook to read, I checked out “Everyday in Tuscany: Season of an Italian Life,” it turns out to be a cannot-put-it-down eBook.

Caesar and Christ

While reading Will Durant's The Story of Civilization Book 3 (Caesar and Christ), I found out how Roman Empire came into being and also discovered Etruscan civilization, which took place in Etruria, Italy where Tuscany is today.

Etruscan civilization lives in Roman Empire

Etruria and Rome fought 14 wars in two centuries and Roman became the ruler of Italy in 272BC, but Etruscan influence survived in Roman Empire to the end. Roman numerals are probably Etruscan, and the name Rome may have come from Etruscan rumon, river. The Etruscans gave Roman brutal gladiatorial contests. Etruscan engineers built walls and sewers of Rome. In fact, for about one century Etruscans ruled the Roman nation. The following excerpts are from Durant's Caesar and Christ.

Greeting the visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is an Etruscan chariot with body and wheels of wood, sheathing and tires of bronze, the high front embossed with figures of considerable grace.

Etruscan Orator

Etruscan art is nearly all that we know of Etruscan history. We can trace in it the manner and morals of the people, the power of religion and caste and the changing tides of economic and culture contact with Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece and Rome.

But either case there is in these painting so frolicsome and impish vivacity that makes one wonder how pleasant the life of Etruscan must have been, if their tombs were so gay.

Love of music and the dance is one of the gracious aspects of Etruscan civilization (about 700 BC until assimilated into Roman Republic, late 4th century BC)

From the seventh to the fourth centuries BC, it was custom among Roman aristocrats to send their sons to Etruscan cities for higher

from Etruscan tomb

education; there, among other things, they learned geometry, surveying, and architecture. Roman dress derived from the Etruscan, or both from a common source.

Etruscan Apollo of Veii

Foreigners flocked to Paris to study during the reign of Louis XIV. Thousands of Italians, Germans and English preferred Paris to their native lands. David McCullough's The Greater Journey was about Americans studied in Paris during 19^th century.

Writing the pleasure of food, wine, gardens and the “voluptuousness of Italian life.”

The author of Every Day in Tuscany is Frances Mayes who with her husband (a poet) has lived in Cortona, Tuscany for 20 some years. She is well known in writing the pleasure of food, wine, gardens and the “voluptuousness of Italian life.”

Being an ignoramus as far as wine goes, I still indulge in wine reading. It may be unfortunate that I enjoy wine reading than I do wine. For those who can appreciate fine wines, especially Italian ones, may get more out of this than I do.  (The followings are excerpts from "Every Day in Tuscany").

Red wine in winter works a spell that I don’t fall under in hot weather. The gorgeous, profound Vino Nobiles, Brunellos, and Super Tuscans can overwhelm summer food. Though Tuscans almost never order white wine, even when it’s one hundred degrees, local makers are undermining that prejudice with some fulsome and spicy whites. I keep my own stash in summer, especially our winemaker friend Riccardo Baracchi’s Astore and some of our recent local whites from D’Alessandro. But when the cold comes down, and in the spirited autumn weather, our biggest Brunello glasses are on the table every night, the decanters filled by six for dinner at eight.

Paolo moves us through his chardonnay, chianti, his two cepparellos (a pure Sangiovese grape content), and two syrahs. With the chardonnay, we start with crostini neri, the Tuscan classic made from chicken livers, and mostarda di peperoni, a condiment of peppers, and a small cannellini bean salad with sopressata. Because Paolo talks about each wine in Italian and then in English for the benefit of a sprinkling of expats, the dinner extends way into the night. Unlike many tastings I've attended in America, wine flows. Arnaldo doesn’t limit us to a taste of each wine, but keeps pouring as people ask questions. By the time we are served the secondo, my attention has mellowed. I remember a California friend whose mantra was, “They all taste good to me.”

For the racy [well used] chianti, Arnaldo selected a tasty gnocchi with ragù made from local Chianina beef. The combination could not be more genuino. I’d like to stand up and quote Cesare Pavese: “A gulp of my drink,” he wrote, “and my body can taste the life / of plants and of rivers.”

The fruit torta I pass by, but I do try a sip of the Isole e Olena Vin Santo, 2000. It tastes like late Thanksgiving afternoon by the fire, a cashmere throw over my legs, lines of a poem running through my head. I’d like to make a walnut cake, just to serve with this smooth elixir. Just as I imagine this vin santo held up to the flames and sloshed around for the play of toast and topaz colors, I feel a surge of homesickness for my daughter, my grandson Willie, my writer neighbors, even for Willie’s goofy labradoodle. Isn’t this the best response to a wine, that taste provokes a fierce emotion? And maybe surreal associations? The ginger-curled, bouncing labradoodle is exactly the color of this elegant vin santo.