San Martino

I pressed the 1934 fruit on the third of November, which was the eleventh day, gently, and put forty-one litres of it into a glass demijohn in the corner of the dairy where the temperature does not move. It is the single best thing I have ever made and I did it by doing less to it than I wanted to.

The fortnight after the books was the best fortnight of that whole autumn. The declaration went to Domaso with two signatures on it. We racked the top-terrace wine into the big oak on the Tuesday and argued about it for forty minutes first, in front of Ettore, like people. He told me three times that I was wrong about things and twice he was right and once I was, and nobody in that cellar had to guess what anybody was thinking.

And on the tenth of November Signora Amadei…