Silent Nights in Panzano

Sorry for the silence but voyaging has been at a somewhat slower pace over the holidays.  We try and usually succeed to spend some of that period in Panzano in Chianti, a village that captures the Christmas spirit.  On Christmas Eve our resident celebrity Dario Cecchini, “The World’s most famous butcher” according to Google, holds his annual street party.  Usually over 20% of the village attends.  The turnout in 2015 was up to the mark.

Talk this year was of a wonderful harvest; both for grapes and olives, a 180° reversal of the disastrous 2014.  Everyone is upbeat and looking forward to the wine release in 2-3 years’ time.  In the meantime the olive oil is green, thick, spicy and luscious : a product you will never see in shops.    

The economics is something else.  You can make money with wine.  Olive oil is another matter.  Growers who use traditional methods lose money on every bottle they sell : so more is less, at least less money in their pockets.  Some have given up.  The groves next to our house containing over 1,000 trees went unpicked the last two years.  At the top of the road one grower ripped up all his trees over the holidays.  Our harvest this year was 550 bottles of exceptional quality.  We could have had more.  Fully costed but pre-shipping I estimate our cash cost at around Euro 18.50 per bottle.  At wholesale we could expect around Euro 7.50 if lucky.  Luckily we are our own best customers.

Still it does strike me as strange that a merely decent bottle of can wine retail for around Euro 40, while the very best olive oil struggles to sell at Euro 20.  That bottle of wine tends to disappear at one sitting, often along with another in our house.  Olive oil often survives to grace    vegetables and salads for a couple of weeks.  The quality gap between top end, handpicked, biodynamic extra virgin olive oil from old trees compared to the commercial mass produced product is every bit as great as that between a premier cru and village plonk.  Yet the price multiple     is only about 3x for the olive oil versus 50x or even more for wine.  Markets are not efficient whatever Professor Sharpe and the Nobel Committee claim.    

Even so grumbling about olive oil was more than submerged by enthusiasm for the latest wine vintage.  Indeed there is generally a much more positive attitude in the main square.  Tourism is on the up.  There is investment all around in agritourismos, new hotels, new vineyards, and improved wine production.  Hopes in this part of Italy are for a better 2016.  The lower Euro makes a difference.  The only worry related to the migrant invasion.  Italy cannot cope.  Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Renzi have very different views on how this problem should be addressed; and as importantly who should pay.  Local opinion is largely that Italy already has done more than its fair share, a sentiment supported by polling data, though this is a debate where accurate data does not often get a look in.

As to other matters of note at this sleepy time of the year, the biggest curse in our valley are the not so wild animals, both deer and boar.  They can be extremely destructive.  Yet the powers that be in Greve do not allow landowners to cull them.  That is why a valley that did not contain a single fence ten years ago affording a pristine view for locals and tourists alike now is interrupted by a series of wire fences separating vines and olive groves.  Both walkers and the scenery suffer due to bureaucratic stupidity.  The crazy system means a mandatory prison sentence for killing a pest, but if you kill a person you could avoid jail with a good lawyer.

The local ‘approved’ shoot has been enjoying this juxtaposition.  Two Saturdays ago they shot 21 boar in our wood, three just outside the garden gate.  Last Saturday they shot 15.  Our wood is not big.  The ratio works out to more than one boar per acre!  Sadly there are still plenty more where those 36 came from.  While nearly everyone views them as a menace we heard stories of hunters leaving food out to encourage larger families for next season.  It has even been suggested that people from other parts of Italy are paying to hunt here though I am sure such rumours cannot be true; and if by some small chance they are true, no-one in authority could possibly know anything about it. 

There is one small positive out of this.  We get given part of the ‘bag’.  So periodically a hairy haunch or two of boar turns up on the doorstep.  Skinning and softening a piece of wild pig is hard work and very time consuming even if the result is a rare treat.  We ended up enjoying some of our very own boar as Cinghiale Pappardelle at the local wine bar : Enoteca Baldi.  That was definitely a better way to benefit : get someone else to do the heavy lifting.

Mimmo Baldi of Enoteca Baldi

Still the valley needs to cull more.  There are so many animals Panzano is in danger of becoming a petting zoo.  Spent a good part of the last day of our Christmas break chasing three very fast and lively young deer that had found a way into our garden, but did not seem to be able to find their way out.  We had to call for reinforcements from Enoteca Baldi to make sure we had enough people to herd them to an exit.  When your garden is on several levels the deer have a definite advantage, but we got rid of the last one just before local restaurants stopped serving lunch!  Having run up and down steep hills for a couple of hours a Bistecca Fiorentina was badly needed, and well deserved.     

Salute to all my followers and the very best for 2016.