A Tuscan tower

While in lockdown my thoughts turned to travel. Being unable to go anywhere other than my immediate neighbourhood when doing my permitted daily exercise or running errands for people who can’t get out of their homes, I found myself looking at photos from old trips. I never did get around to writing about trips abroad over the last couple of years, which is not good for someone who once aspired to be a travel writer! Now seems as good a time as any to remedy that.

In late April of last year, we went to Montepulciano – a lovely old hilltop town in southern Tuscany. The house we rented out was actually in the old town itself, located in the narrow streets that are a short walk downhill from the central piazza. 

There were some lovely wine bars within very easy walking distance from our front door which was a great way to try the local wines, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano and Rosso di Montepulciano – the main difference being that the former must be aged in a barrel for three years while the latter only has to be aged for one year (rather like the difference between Brunello di Montalcino and Rosso di Montalcino). On warm days, these wine bars are very useful as they often make use of the cellars where the temperature is much cooler, as if we needed an excuse for visiting them! 

Neither of the Montepulciano wines, of course, are to be confused with Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, a wine with which I am very familiar thanks to it having been included in the ‘two bottles for a fiver’ deal that used to be a major reason for shopping in the small grocery that Allison and I used to live above.

The high point of Montepulciano – the wine aside – is Piazza Grande, the central square/piazza on which are to be found the cathedral and the town hall. The cathedral – the duomo – is striking for its unfinished façade which makes it look very different from most Italian churches and cathedrals (inside, the must-see thing that the guidebooks all mention is an ornate triptych behind the altar, although when I had a look inside there was merely a screen showing what I presume to be a representation of said ornate triptych which was presumably covering up some restoration work).

Both the cathedral and the town hall have bell towers, and this interested me a lot because I am always interested in the prospect of climbing towers. The cathedral’s bell tower, alas, is not open to the public. However, you can walk up the tower of the nearby Palazzo Communale, the medieval town hall which still performs its original function! It looked slightly familiar, which I found odd given that I’d never been to Montepulciano before, but then I realised that that’s because it looks like the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

For five euros I jumped at the chance. Funnily enough, none of my travelling-companions – Allison, my parents and my mother-in-law – fancied coming along too. My guidebook (Lonely Planet’s Florence & Tuscany) stated that there were “67 narrow stairs” following which I could enjoy “extraordinary views” of the town and the surrounding countryside.

What the guidebook hadn’t mentioned was that in order to get to the narrow stairs I had to go through the council offices – up the main staircase and through what looked like the civic archives! Quite what the people who work for the council make of this I do not know (the way to the tower clearly goes right past someone’s desk) but I guess they must be used to it, or maybe not as I did not encounter anyone else on this particular tower adventure.

These stairs led onto the main roof, from which I could look out over the Piazza Grande, and from there I could access the tower itself with its narrow wooden steps leading up to the big bell.

Fantastic! The views from the top are truly stunning; from there, tiled rooftops of Montepulciano simply fall away down the hill, and on a clear day there are wide views of the southern Tuscan countryside to be had. Lucky me, with a tower to myself and clear blue skies...

The cathedral bell tower opposite (slightly lower than my new look-out point, I smugly noted while wondering what this said about relations between the church and the civic authorities) had what appeared to be a couple of plastic chairs which led me to wonder who might be able to access and use these – junior priests sneaking off for a smoke-break was my guess, although they could have been using the tower as a means of getting away from the numbers for more spiritual purposes.

Back down, it was time, I felt, for something red and refreshing in one of those wine bars...

'Through Paris lay my readiest path...'

When in Paris, there are a couple of places that I try to visit whenever I'm there. Or perhaps that should be 'here', as I am writing this while sipping from a glass of wine in an apartment in the 11th arrondissement.

The wine element is important here as it was purchased in our favourite Parisian wine bar, Le Baron Rouge which can be found close to the Marche d'Aligre, just south of the Rue de Faubourg Sainte-Antoine in the 12th. Aligre is a must-visit market whenever Allison and I go to Paris, and after browsing the flea-market and buying food which we will cook later, we make our way to Le Baron Rouge for a glass or two of wine.

Le Baron is truly our favourite wine-bar in Paris. It's packed with good quality wines that can be had by the glass for (usually) 3 or 4 euros a pop, and these include a few that you'd have to work hard to find in London, but it's a decidedly working-class bar (a lot of the market traders like to frequent it after a day's work) in which the pretensions that can be associated with wine-tasting are left outside.

As well as great wine, you can get platters of cheese and charcuterie (and, on Saturdays, oysters) so it's good for lunch. You can even buy wine to take away - and not just by the bottle, but by the litre (or even the five-litre plastic carton) which is drawn straight from the barrel.

Later in the day, I went to the Left Bank - specifically, the Rue de la Bucherie (within sight of Notre Dame) - to visit one of my favourite shops, Shakespeare & Company. This is a true Paris institution, an English-language bookshop that is actually three places in one - a bookshop, a second-hand bookshop (not usually located within the same establishment) and a reference library!

The place was opened in the Fifties although the founder, a visionary of sorts called George Whitman, did not originally call it Shakespeare & Company, choosing later to name it after a bookshop of that name that had existed at a different location on the Left Bank between the Wars (patrons then had included Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce).

I try and visit Shakespeare & Company every time I'm in Paris, As I usually do, I browsed the second-hand stalls outside and had a look inside (where all the new books are) before going upstairs to the reference section which doubles a sleeping-area for writers who earn their board by working on the counter during the daylight hours.

Up there, there's a piano - someone was having a go on that, and a good job she was doing - and in the front room part of the tan leather armchair was occupied by a white cat having a snooze; I presumed that this was the same cat who had been responsible for tearing up part of said leather armchair. Elsewhere in the room was a window-facing desk bearing a typewriter (anyone can have a go, apparently) and at any given time at least two would-be writers can be seen jotting something down in a notebook that is either Moleskine or a close imitation of that brand.

You can just choose a book - any book - and sit and read. I browsed, obviously; after discounting old favourites like Boswell's Life of Johnson and Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean (on the grounds that I own those, back home), I picked up a 1930s edition of Wordsworth's The  Prelude, and on flicking though it I came across the bit (in Book IX) describing  a visit he made to Paris:

Through Paris lay my readiest path, and there
I sojourn'd a few days, and visited
In haste each spot of old and recent fame
The latter chiefly...

Wordsworth was in Paris in the early 1790s, so he took in not just the sights - then as now, 'Mont Martyr' was evidently a must-visit - but also the places where key events of the French Revolution had taken place; he even describes going to the site of the Bastille - right next to what he called 'the suburbs of St. Anthony' (ie. the Rue du Faubourg Sainte-Antoine), which is of course not far from a certain present-day wine bar of my acquaintance...

And from the rubbish gather'd up a stone
And pocketed the relick...

Very interesting. In c. 1792, William Wordsworth was picking up a piece of the Bastille to take home. For me, the parallel between that and tourists visiting Berlin two hundred years later and taking a piece of the Wall as a souvenir was very striking.

Thus enlightened, I made my way back to 'our' apartment. Where I had some wine - purchased from (where else?) Le Baron Rouge.    

The history of the world, according to drinks

Last September in Toronto, I was browsing in a bookshop (as you do) when I noticed a book called A History of the World in 6 Glasses. Looking at the blurb on the back, I learned that this was world history with a twist - the twist being that this book was the history of the world looked at through six beverages that have had a powerful influence on human history. I'd never heard of the author, who I presumed to be either Canadian or American. The book's premise sounded good, so I bought it.

I'd paid $21 for it; only later, when I read all of the blurb on the back, did I realise that the author, Tom Standage, is British (as well as several books, he has written for the Grauniad and the Torygraph). The book that I'd bought is published in Britain with a regular retail price of £9:99, and I didn't need to check the exchange rate to realise that by buying it in Canada I'd paid a little bit more for it! 

Now I like the idea of history as seen via a specific item or set of items - somewhere in my book collection is a book about how cod changed the world, while the usually superb 'last word' section of The Week had an extract last week from a new book about how humanity has come to be heavily dependent on chicken. There are also books out there about how condiments like salt and sugar have changed the world.

Standage has chosen six drinks that between them tell the story of human history, from the Stone Age to the present day. The drinks are three alcoholic beverages and three caffeinated ones: Beer, wine, spirits (a rather vague term, but bear with him), coffee, tea and Coca-Cola (now we're into specifics), with two chapters on each. It's a brilliant read.

Beer, I learned, dates back to c.10,000 BC and was discovered in the area known as the Fertile Crescent - that part of the world (Egypt, up the Mediterranean coast to southern Turkey and across the Euphrates and the Tigris to the border between Iraq and Iran) where people first took up farming and established large-scale settlements. A crucial discovery at that time was that gruel made with malted grain (itself caused by the near-impossibility of storing grain in watertight storage pits) would, if left sitting around for a couple of days, ferment. Beer came to be a highly important beverage in ancient civilisations, and from the start the emphasis was on socialising - since its origins, beer has always been a social drink (although the ancient practice of people drinking it with straws out of a large pottery jar has fallen by the wayside) as well as being seen as a gift from the gods and as such used a lot in religious rituals - in Ancient Egypt, the story of a mix of water and fermented grain being left out in the sun was attributed to Osiris, who among other things was responsible for agriculture. The Ancient Egyptians were buried with, among other thing, beer (sieves for beer-making were found in Tutankhamen's tomb). It also contributed to the origins of writing; some of the earliest written documents are Sumerian wage lists and tax receipts on which the symbol for beer is one of the most common words.

The origins of wine are also lost in pre-history although it is said to have originated from the Zagros mountains (located in modern-day Armenia and northern Iran), where wild vines grew; Mount Ararat is nearby, so the Biblical story of Noah planting the first vineyard after the flood (and getting drunk on the results) does reflect wine's origins in this part of the world. Wine, though, came into its own in Ancient Greece where it was first produced on a large commercial scale and played a key role in the development of Western civilisation. The Greeks drank it mixed with water (only Dionysius, the god of wine - renamed Bacchus by the Romans - could drink it neat), and the symposia, where rational enquiry was pursued via adversarial discussion (the results, among other things, being the concept of democracy), were wine-fuelled. To the Romans, wine production was a sign of civilisation and in this respect it's worth noting that they planted vines wherever they went, which was how wine came to be first produced in Britain. It also became tied up with the origins of Christianity - Jesus's first miracle was turning water into wine, and wine was served at the Last Supper which in turn led to its central role in the Eucharist. Linked to this is a reaction against wine that came with the rise of Islam.

Ironically, it was in Arab-controlled Spain that wine started to be distilled, which brings our story to spirits (indeed, the word 'alcohol' is of Arabic origin). Originally used for medicinal purposes (hence why it was known as aqua vitae - water of life - which was translated into uisge beatha in Gaelic - the origin of the word 'whisky'). Distilled booze came into prominence during the Age of Exploration as spirits, being more compact than beer and wine, could be better transported on ships and so was used as a trading good, the taxation and control of which would have big implications on the course of history. The rise of sugar plantations in the West Indies led to the making of rum from the otherwise useless by-product that was molasses; it was given to newly-arrived slaves to subdue them and was adopted by the Royal Navy. Admiral Vernon hit upon the idea of diluting the daily rum ration with water and mixing it with sugar and lime juice - a primitive cocktail which became known as grog and led reduced instances of scurvy among sailors so dramatically that it allowed the Royal Navy to become the most dominant maritime force of the 18th and 19th centuries (and, incidentally, led to British sailors being nicknamed 'limeys'). Rum was also produced in the American Colonies, as importing molasses from the West Indies was cheaper than importing brandy and wine from Europe, and grain and vine production was sufficiently problematic to limit beer and wine production. The colonists mostly used molasses from the French islands (there was more of that), and the British government's attempts to force the colonists to import it from the British islands led to higher taxation of the French product, resulting in increased smuggling and also increased resentment against British rule.

At around the same time, another drink with origins in the Muslim world took Europe by storm. From the unknown Ethiopian goatherd who noticed the effect of the berries of a particular plant on his goats and reported this to his imam (or possibly the man from Mocha who claimed to have been guided to a coffee-plant in a vision), coffee became the social drink of choice in a civilisation where alcohol was banned, and in the seventeenth century it spread to Europe. Pope Clement VIII is said to have insisted on tasting it before approving it (appropriately, therefore, the first European to approve of coffee was Italian), and by the 1660s coffee-houses were big in London; despite attempts to suppress them, they were a hit and led to innovations such as the penny post (started because so many people used coffee-houses as a mailing address) and the publication of Newton's Principia - which resulted from a heated coffee-house discussion between Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren in 1684, the content of which was retold by Edmond Halley to Isaac Newton a couple of months later. As well as scientific advancement, the London coffee-houses also fuelled the world of finance; Lloyd's of London, one of the world's leading insurance markets, started out in a coffee-house, and Jonathan's Coffee House on Exchange, where stockbrokers met, became the Stock Exchange. Coffee made it out to the Americas thanks largely to a French naval officer called Gabriel de Clieu who unofficially took a cutting from the only coffee-plant in Paris (owned by Louis XIV) to the West Indies; he planted it at Martinique, and descendants of this plant later flourished throughout the region. Back in France, coffee powered the Enlightenment, coffee-houses being the meeting-place of choice for Parisian intellectuals; Voltaire, Rousseau and \Diderot were regulars at the Cafe Procope, which was also frequented by Benjamin Franklin. They became centres of revolutionary thought, and on 12th June 1789, Camile Desmoulins gave a speech outside the Cafe de Foy which led to the Storming of the Bastile two days later; the French Revolution had, quite literally, began in a coffee-house.

Tea, meanwhile, originated in China in or around c.2700 BC (the Emperor Shen Nung is credited with having been the first person to brew-up) and came to Europe during the Age of Exploration. It was introduced to England by Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese princess who married Charles II. He evidently preferred the company of several mistresses, but his wife had brought as part of her dowry a chest of tea (it was also as a result of this dowry that Bombay became an English possession). She loved the stuff, which quickly became fashionable among the upper classes as a result. By the end of the 1660s, the East India Company was importing tea from the Far East. Tea would remain a luxury item until well into the 18th century, but as it became more plentiful it became a hit with the rest of the population (in time, this would lead the British to develop tea plantations in India as a means of maintaining supply). When the Industrial Revolution started, mill-owners looking to increase productivity hit upon the idea of ensuring that the workers could have access to a drink that wasn't alcoholic and could fend off hunger during long shifts; thus was that great British institution known as the tea-break created. Over in America, resentment at both a tax on tea and the East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade led to increased smuggling, and when the British government slashed the tea tax a group of Boston smugglers (fearing for their livelihood) dressed up as Mohawks, forcibly boarded three of the Company's tea-carrying ships and emptied their contents into the harbour. Similar 'tea parties' followed; this led to the Coercive Acts which only served to enrage the colonists further, prompting the American Revolution. 

The last of the six drinks is, appropriately for the 20th century, more of a brand than a drink. Invented in Atlanta in 1886 by a maker of patent remedies (ie. quack medicines - hugely popular in the US in the late 19th century) called Joseph Pemberton, Coca-Cola started out as a wine infused with coca leaves and kola nut extract; a non-alcoholic version was developed after the sale of alcohol was banned in Atlanta due to pressure from that singularly intemperate movement that was called temperance. Originally sold as a syrup to soda-fountain owners, it was first bottled in 1899 - following which, sales exploded as it could now be sold just about anywhere, and following a legal case in 1911 it was allowed to be sold to children - thus bringing caffeine to a group of people who previously hadn't drank tea and coffee. Father Christmas first appeared drinking the stuff in 1931 (although, contrary to what I'd previously thought, images of him wearing red pre-date this), and ity unexpectedly did well out of the ending of Prohibition by being promoted as a mixer. Then came the Second World War, during which wherever the GIs went, Coca-Cola went too. General Eisenhower was particular keen that this taste of home should be accessible to his soldiers, and bottling plants were set up at all American bases. By the end of the war, Coca-Cola had established itself on every continent. Even General Zhukov, the Soviet Union's greatest general, got the taste for it after he met with Eisenhower, although he had to have it a colourless version specially made for him so Stalin wouldn't find out. The cola wars followed (rivals Pepsi got a foot behind the Iron Curtain which Coca-Cola never managed, although this helped them to benefit from the fall of the Berlin Wall, and when Coca-Cola went into Israel to avoid a boycott by the Jewish community in the States, the Arab world went for Pepsi), and today Coca-Cola is not only one of the most recognised brand in the world, but it is apparently the second most commonly understood phrase in the world, after 'OK'.

Standage ends his superb book with an epilogue in which he looks to the future, and finds it in a drink that has defined human development but has at times seldom been drank in its pure form due to the fact that it has, for most of human history, been contaminated; water. Bottled water is the new big thing in the Western world, and in the developing world access to water remains a matter of life and death. It, more than anything else, is seen as the most likely source for future conflict in the Middle East (having previously been a crucial but largely overlooked factor in the Six Day War), while it is also seen as a potential source of conflict among the ex-Soviet states in Central Asia. But it can also promote co-operation, as seen by the agreements on the management of the Indus (India and Pakistan) and Mekong (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam) rivers. 

This, in short, is a superb book that I cannot recommend highly enough. I'm not sure if I will ever look at certain drinks in the same way again.

St Lawrence Market

We’re in Toronto, and on our first morning we went to the centre of town to visit the St Lawrence Market. This old-fashioned covered market and local landmark is not only a mecca for food-lovers of Toronto but has been hailed by National Geographic as the top food market in the world. Not in North America. The world. (Borough Market, by the way, came tenth.)

Located in the part of town known as Old York (York having been the name of the settlement established here by Governor Simcoe in the 1790s; it was renamed Toronto in 1834), the market has been running for over 200 years.

The items on offer on the lower level are a fair reflection of modern Toronto’s diversity; as well as coffee from just about anywhere in the world (they’ll even grind it for you should you so wish) and many varieties of rice, you can get perogies, crêpes, souvlaki, spices, meat pies, Chinese food, more preserves than you’d care to name and all sorts of other tasty treats here. Up on the main level butchers, bakers, fishmongers and cheesemongers (who do a good line in cheeses imported from places like England, France and Italy as well as Canadian cheeses) co-exist side by side in St Lawrence, where the only problems appear to be people who suddenly stop to look at things, as well as the perennial dilemma of what to buy, and who to buy it from.

We found a wine merchant who seemed very happy to talk about the various Ontario wines he had on offer; a few samples later and we were walking away with a bottle of ’13 Riesling (Ontario Riesling being somewhat less sickly-sweet than its German counterpart) and a ’12 Trius Red (a blend of Cab Sauv, Cab Franc and Merlot; it’s superb, and surprisingly mature-tasting for a two year-old wine).

For lunch, the crowds seem to know that the Carousel Bakery is the stall to head to; this is the one that is best-known for serving up the Torontonian take on the bacon roll that is the peameal bacon bun (“Experience this Toronto tradition, eh!”). Cut much thicker than a regular rasher of bacon, peameal bacon is made from boneless pork loins rolled in ground yellow cornmeal (originally, ground yellow peas were used, hence the name), and it is a Toronto speciality which harks back to the time when the city was nicknamed ‘Hogtown’ due to the large number of pork processing facilities that existed here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  It’s delicious and filling, but don’t just take my word for it; when Anthony Bourdain came here for The Layover, it’s what he had for breakfast.

The wares on the various seafood stalls looked fantastic –live lobsters, sushi-quality tuna steaks, wild salmon from British Columbia, scallops, oysters … we went for the mussels (from Prince Edward Island) which were on display in a large tank of water, from which our order was scooped out.

The butchers are masters of their trade who are happy to guide customers in the ways of all the different cuts and varieties that can be had. Should you want some mustard to go with your newly-purchased meat, there’s a stall for that where you can sample dozens of different types; I even found a couple that I rather liked (and I speak as someone who, as a rule, doesn’t particularly like mustard).

Elsewhere, two fruit-and-veg stalls compete for trade side by side, under a sign reminding customers that “We’re two separate stores”. One can only imagine the arguments that occurred before that went up! We purchased a few items from one of these places which, later that day, joined the mussels in a delicious moules marinieres.

St Lawrence Market: Gourmet’s paradise. A Toronto must-visit.

Saint-Émilion

It’s a general rule of thumb that anywhere that UNESCO has deigned to classify as a World Heritage Site is usually worth a visit. There are currently 981 of these places in the world, and a quick calculation has shown that so far in 2013 Allison and I have visited seven of them.

One such place is Saint-Émilion, a small town in France located just over 20 miles north-east of Bordeaux which we visited while staying with friends in that part of the world a couple of weeks ago. It boasts narrow cobbled streets leading up to a Romanesque church which dominates the skyline of the town, which is all very picturesque but what draws people to the place is what’s produced in the vineyards around the town. For Saint-Émilion is, along with Graves, Pomerol and the Médoc, one of the principal vin rouge-producing areas of Bordeaux, itself one of the most famous wine-producing regions in a country renowned for its wine.

It’s been its own appelation d'origine controlée (AOC) – meaning that the wine produced there can be labelled as being from Saint-Émilion in particular rather than the Bordeaux region in general, and that any wine produced elsewhere cannot have the words ‘Saint-Émilion’ on the label – for decades, it has even had its own distinct system of classifying its wine (of which more later).

On a scorching hot day, we had lunch and then walked around the town, dropping in on a couple of wine shops to sample what it is that makes Saint-Émilion so famous. Wine shops in these places, easily spotted by their displays of oversize wine bottles, boxes and the occasional barrel by the door, tend to offer free samples of the local product, but only to people who give off the impression that they’re actually considering buying the wine. Or, more likely, ones that have no other customers when you walk in; there’s nothing worse than going into one of these places and finding that the only shop assistant is concentrating all of his efforts on a couple who can’t decide which wine to buy (by the case, if you please). If you want to sample the wine and find out a bit about it, an empty wine shop is what you want.

We eventually found such an outlet located just down from the main square (the one with the church) and persuaded the shop assistant, who introduced himself as Benoit, that we were interested in sampling his wares.

The château in question was called Petit-Gravet, and it wasn’t long before Benoit was pouring us each a glass of the 2010 vintage to sample.

Benoit proved to be highly informative about the vineyard, and also gave us some pointers about which vintage we should buy. This, apparently, was dependent on what we wanted to do with the wine as each year’s vintage is different (all down to how the weather affected the grapes and the terroir). If we were after a wine to lay down for a few years, then the 2010 which we’d just sampled was recommended; 2010 was, it seems, a very good year and the best wines of that vintage need to be laid down for up to 15 years in order to be fully appreciated! The same, it seems, is true of the 2005 vintage.

The long-term potential of these will only be realised in a couple of decades. In the shop, evidence of the potential could be seen on a shelf bearing wines from great Bordeaux vintages of the past, retailing for hundreds of euros. I gingerly touched one of the bottles, but was afraid to lift it up for fear of dropping it. Such things are best left alone.

I suspect that Benoit must have realised that we weren’t there for a wine that we could lay down in a cellar that we don’t have. However, if we were after a wine to drink now, then the 2007 would be more to our liking – the wine of that year being an early drinking vintage; evidently, the château’s people had decided, presumably after a couple of tasting sessions, that this was not a vintage that was expected to improve much with any more age (what criteria do they use to decide this, I wonder – and, more to the point, how do I get that job?!).

As it happens, a wine that we could drink with our dinner that evening was exactly what we were looking for, so I bought a bottle of the ’07.

The fact that the bottles for Château Petit-Gravet bear the words grand cru (‘great growth’) was very encouraging, as even I know that this is meant to designate the superiority of a particular vineyard and/or terroir and that the wines from said vineyard have to have been properly assessed before those words can go on the label. But alas, or even zut alors! In the Saint-Émilion AOC it’s the lowest on the classification system, which rather confusingly is different from the classification systems for everywhere else (including the rest of Bordeaux). Controversy over recent Saint-Émilion classifications – complete with accusations of skulduggery on the part of the people chosen to do the tasting – hasn’t helped either.  

But this is mere detail. At the end of the day, wine from a place like Saint-Émilion that hasn’t been deemed to be of the highest quality is still going to be pretty damned good at the very least. Rather than get bogged down in details, I decided to just enjoy the wine – which was full of flavour, smooth and above all delicious.

Birrifico!

When we first thought of going to Turin for a few days, the first thing I thought of was that classic 1969 heist film The Italian Job, starring Michael Caine and a trio of Mini-Coopers that are driven around said Italian city with their boots stuffed full of gold bars.

To Allison, meanwhile, Turin is synonymous with Salone del Gusto, the biannual foodie festival that she attended several years ago when she was travelling through Europe. Italy is the home of the Slow Food movement and with Salone due to be held in late October we were both looking forward to sampling some artisanal Italian food (which, by the way, was the second thing I thought of).

Our journey to Turin was via the Eurostar and an express from Paris – a pleasant and relaxing contrast to flying out to Italy with Ryanair. As was the case when we went to Paris earlier this year, we were staying not in a hotel but in someone’s flat, found via Airbnb. Our host even met us at the station – a nice touch, especially as we’d never have found the flat otherwise!

When we asked her if there were any local bars that she could recommend, I naturally assumed – this being Italy – that we would be having a couple of glasses of Peroni or Birra Moretti before calling it a night. When we reached the bar and found that its name included what I assumed to be the name ‘birrifico’ – well, I assumed that to be a cute-sounding hybrid of birra and magnifico. What it actually was was birrificio, which is Italian for ‘brewery’. Yes, we had been directed to a brewpub. As if that wasn’t disorientating enough, there was a band playing Irish folk-songs to a cosmopolitan crowd, many of whom were like us in town for Salone.

The beers on offer included a wheat beer, an American pale ale, a stout (which I didn’t opt for) and a bitter – all brewed on the premises. Not what I had expected of Italy – and it was really, really good. Frankly, had it not been for the fact that I had been on the go since 5:30am, I could’ve happily stayed for a few more. By the way, should beer-loving readers of this blog find themselves in Turin, the bar is called Birrificio la Piazza and is located on Via Durandi.

I did not dwell on this too much the following morning as our pre-Salone Turin sight-seeing took in the Duomo where, like many a pilgrim, we didn’t actually get to see the Shroud (our guidebook made it clear that the one on display is a replica, and even that is covered by a special altar-cloth), and the Lingotto. The old FIAT factory is still standing despite the fact that not a car has rolled out of the place since the 1980s – it’s now a large shopping centre among other things. That said, the legendary rooftop test-track, used for part of the chase sequence in The Italian Job, is still there, accessible via the Pinacoteca art gallery, which houses a small collection of Canalettos, Matisses and a Picasso that were owned by the FIAT-founding Agnelli family. I am sure that we were not the first people who took in some high culture purely as a means of being able to walk out onto the test-track.

FIAT, by the way, stands for Fabbrica Italiana di Automobili di Torino – not, as is sometimes assumed, ‘Fix It Again, Tony’.

And so to Salone. We tried some great food, including samples of artisanal cheeses from all over Italy, cooked meats and a delicious Mac ‘d Bra. Should you ever get the chance to have one of these, I would recommend that you do. It’s a bread roll containing Bra cheese, lettuce and a special veal salsice, all of which are produced in and around the Piedmontese town of Bra, some thirty-odd miles south of Turin and the home of the Slow Food movement. In the wine section, we sampled fine Italian wines including a ’99 Brunello di Montalcino, which sells for over £60 a bottle.

As we were making our way towards the exit, we chanced across a beer stand and opted to see what they had to offer. What we found shouldn’t have come as a surprise following the brewpub experience the night before, but surprised we were. The very helpful man explained that as well as importing more quality beers than ever before from countries like Britain and Belgium (Chimay had a stand nearby) than ever before, Italy is now home to many an artisanal birrificio.

Beer, it seems, is the new ‘in’ drink among discerning Italians – and when it comes to food and drink, is there any other kind of Italian? The really surprising thing here, though, is not that they like the decent Belgian and British brands (I’d say that would be a given for any beer-loving country) but that some of them have established their own craft breweries. Plenty of this was on offer at Salone – we tried a craft Belgian-style beer called Birra Roma, the more English-style Re Ale and a few samples from the Birrificio L’Olmaia. I consider myself to be something of a beer aficionado and I was seriously impressed by the range and the quality.

Our friend on the stall wasn’t convinced that the Italian beer boom would last, but what was clear is that this is no flash in the pan. Good quality Italian beers are here to stay.

An interesting parallel can perhaps be drawn with the rise of the English wine industry; a nation famous for producing one kind of alcoholic beverage is now trying its hand at another.

A short while later, as we browsed around the nearby quality food-market that is Eataly, I noted that a wide range of quality imported beers were on offer in addition to the many decent Italian wines and the two-litre bottles that can be filled with table wine straight from the barrel (for four euros). As far as the Italian-brewed beers were concerned, though, what surprised me was that Birra Moretti now does its own grand-cru Belgian-style beer. So it’s not just newly-established breweries that are catering to a growing market.

The Italians have not only discovered good beer, they’ve figured out how to brew very good beer.

Salute!

American paratroopers, French wine and a British spy: Three books about the Second World War

I have always been fascinated by the Second World War, from visits to the Normandy landing beaches as a schoolboy and hearing my grandfather tell me about his experiences in the Navy to using the royalist Yugoslav resistance as a dissertation subject, diving to the wreck of a British destroyer off the coast of Malta and undertaking a solo excursion to El Alamein when I was backpacking in Egypt.

Oh, and reading a lot of books.

Recently, I’ve read three more books that have shed further light on different aspects of the war.

I’d seen the TV series, of course, so I reckoned I knew what to expect when I found a copy of Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose in a local charity shop. It follows the officers and men of an American paratroop company – Easy Company, part of the 506^th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101^st Airborne Division – from their training in Georgia to the capture of Berchtesgaden, via the horrors of D-Day, Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge.

It turns out I did not know the whole story, because as is the case with many books that are the inspiration for a film or TV adaptation you get so much more from the book. Ambrose succeeds in taking the reader into the minds of a group of seemingly ordinary men who became extraordinary soldiers (the book is based on extensive interviews with the veterans themselves). One feels with them the fear, the pain and above all the intense cold. In addition, Ambrose does a good job of providing the context for each of the battles before taking us into said battles from the soldiers’ perspective.

I have one quibble. Obviously this is a book about the men in one (American) unit and their war experiences, but I find myself shaking my head every time they find themselves working with British troops as these are invariably portrayed as bunch of poorly-trained bunglers. In this context, I note that Ambrose has also written a book about the British capture of Pegasus Bridge in the early hours of D-Day. Having visited Pegasus Bridge myself, I’d like to give this one a go but I wonder how the men of the Ox & Bucks Light Infantry will fare at the hands of this author.

Towards the end of the war, Easy Company and the rest of the 101^st Airborne captured Hitler’s mountain stronghold of Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, which contained (among other things) more Nazi souvenirs that you could shake a swagger-stick at, several staff cars that the soldiers were understandably quick to take for test-drives and enough booze to sink several battleships. That’s where my next war book begins.

The book starts at the end of the war, when one Sergeant de Nonencourt of the French Army found himself in Berchtesgaden alongside the Americans. There, he and his men helped to ‘liberate’ many bottles of the finest champagne that the Nazis had been hoarding. Quite incredibly, Sergeant de Nonencourt was not only from the Champagne region, but his family was (and still is) in the champagne business and he had witnessed the Germans carrying away those same bottles back in 1940.

Thus begins Wine and War by Donald and Petie Kladstrup, a book which tells the wartime story of ‘France’s greatest treasure’ – her wine.It’s an unusual angle, but the Kladstrups succeed in presenting an informative, poignant and highly readable account of how France, with particular emphasis on the French wine industry, coped with the German occupation. Hitler’s teetotalism notwithstanding, many Germans from ordinary soldiers to high-ranking Nazi officials regarded the wine as the best of the spoils of war, and the Wehrmacht requisitioned tens of thousands of bottles to be sent back to Germany. This book is the story of how the vintners of France reacted to this.

There are tales of heroism, ingenuity, black humour, resistance and (it has to be said) a few actions which verge on collaboration – be it with either the Vichy regime or with the Germans. Some vintners, like the owners of Moët & Chandon, engaged in acts of outright resistance whenever they could, while others resisted in more passive ways, such as lying about yields and relabeling inferior vintages to fool the Germans into thinking they were being given the best bottles (which were hidden in walled-up parts of the cellars). Ultimately, it is the extraordinary stories of individuals that shine through, as ordinary people risked their lives and the lives of their families to save something that they believed, with considerable justification, to be worth saving. As such, the wine at times almost becomes a metaphor for France itself.

If you are interested in the war, or interested in wine, I would recommend that you read this book.

The final war book is Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre, which describes the adventures of a lone, rogue Englishman – wartime spy Eddie Chapman.

A hardened if rather unsuccessful criminal, Chapman found himself in a Jersey prison cell when the Germans invaded the Channel Islands. He saw volunteering to spy for Germany as a way of getting back to Britain, where he planned to turn himself in and offer to send false information to German intelligence.

What follows is a cloak-and-dagger escapade that would’ve been denounced as far-fetched if it were the plot of a novel as this unlikeliest of heroes is trained (and wined and dined) by the Germans, survives a parachute drop into East Anglia, turns himself in and, with the full backing of MI5 (who already knew about his mission thanks to the codebreakers at Bletchley Park), embarks on a life of double-cross and deception as he passes false information to German intelligence. MI5 even fakes a sabotage attack on the De Havilland factory in Hatfield at one point to convince the Germans that Chapman is still loyal to the Third Reich.

Although as suspicious of Chapman as his MI5 handlers were (rightly so, given that the man himself even admitted that ordinary people shouldn’t trust men like him), Macintyre has written a highly enjoyable biography which shines a light onto both a fascinating if very disreputable man who for all his faults must’ve had nerves and other body parts of solid steel, and the murky world of wartime intelligence.

It so happens that I was working in Hendon when I read this book, and I noted with interest that Chapman lived there with his MI5 handlers while he was transmitting false information to Germany. A quick perusal of the A-Z told me where the road in question could be found, and naturally I went to take a look. Well, let me tell you that there’s no evidence that the house where he lived was ever an MI5 safe-house. Not that I was really expecting any, of course. But, such is my interest in the war, I couldn’t resist going along to take a look and make sure.

Where the swifts take us

The sound that I am mostly associating with Paris at the moment is that of the swifts that seem to be constantly flying overhead. They are there when I wake up in the morning, and they’re there now in the evening as I’m typing this.

Allison and I are in Paris for a week, not just self-catering but hiring out an apartment in the 12^th arondissement from a Parisian student. If you’ve ever seen a movie set in Paris you can imagine what it’s like – up on the top floor of a pre-war block, accessible only by a set of very squeaky wooden stairs with a tiny kitchen, no air-conditioning and a long corridor connecting the bedroom from the lounge. With the windows open all the time, we get to hear all the sounds of the city. If the best way to experience Paris is to live like a Parisian, then we’re on the right track!

Located at the eastern end of the city, the 12^th is one of those places that is described as undergoing gentrification. Among other things, it’s home to the Marché d’Aligre, a market widely regarded in the blogosphere as being the sort of place which is frequented by locals and to which tourists hardly ever venture. Naturally, we had to pay a visit.

The market itself is in three parts – a flea-market, an open-air fruit and veg market and the covered market which is home to the butchers and fishmongers. We took many pictures and used Allison’s French skills to purchase some lovely-looking items for dinner. This done, we did what any self-respecting Parisian would do after buying food from the market. We went for a drink.

But not just any drink! Just behind the Marché d’Aligre is Le Baron Rouge, a wine-bar that the Lonely Planet’s Paris City Guide describes as “just about the ultimate Parisian wine bar experience”. Well, with a recommendation like that it would be rude not to visit.

It’s unpretentious to say the least, and what surprised me the most when we walked in was that they had barrels – real, big wine barrels – against the wall. We soon learned that those in the know just bring along their empty bottles and five-litre plastic jugs, and get them filled up with a variety of French wines. Now, if only someone would offer to carry said wine up six flights of stairs for us…

We made our way to the bar at the back and perused a most extensive wine list which, like in all good Parisian establishments, was written on a blackboard rather than typed up on laminated paper. I had three wines that I had never tried before: a red Sancerre, a Pinot Noir d’Alsace and a Côte du Jura from near the Swiss border – the last one looks so thin it could almost be a rosé. Of those, I most liked the Pinot Noir d’Alsace, which was served cold – unusual for a red, but I figured that our host knew what he was doing when it came to serving each of his wines. Allison opted for white, trying a Muscadet-sur-Lie, a Petit Chablis and a Sancerre. None were more than €3.50 a glass. For what it’s worth, I don’t know why a wine bar in Paris would be named after a German war hero.

In the afternoon, our wanderings in the sun took us down to the Seine, where we followed the swifts across the islands to the Left Bank. We waved at the people on the tour boats and went through the park at the back of Notre Dame in order to avoid the crowds. On the Left Bank, we wandered past the picture-sellers before reaching an English-language bookshop.

Shakespeare and Company is not just a bookshop; it’s the most famous English-language bookshop in Paris and has been selling new and second-hand books to the many Anglophones who’ve found themselves in this fair city for as long as anyone can remember. Bookshops are my favourite kind of shop, so I felt that I just had to visit this one while in Paris.

As well as a selection of new books on French themes and an interesting range of used paperbacks, there is a reference library upstairs where anyone can enjoy reading a book while sinking into a sofa and listening to pretentious exchange students discussing the finer points of literature.

Down in the main shop, I browsed and I must have recalled enjoying some wine in an establishment named after the Red Baron, for I came across a book called War & Wine. Written by American couple Don and Petie Kladstrup, a TV news correspondent and a freelance writer specialising in France respectively, the book is about how French wine producers endeavoured to prevent the Germans from stealing their best wine during the Second World War.  I look forward to indulging in a few chapters tonight over a glass or two of Côtes du Rhône.

I wonder where the swifts will take us tomorrow?