Hunting Truffles

Chapter 3 Working the Vineyard in Sinalunga

Chapter 3

Working the Vineyard in SinalungaThree hundred miles away, in a dusty field in Tuscany, Paolo straightened up and arched his back, then leaned on the rake he had been scraping across the hardened earth at his feet. He took off his weather-beaten Washington Nationals baseball cap, stained from sweat and dusty from . work, and fanned the muggy air to stir even a bit of breeze on his face.

It was mid-September, usually a time of some relief in the vineyard since the harvest was mostly completed, and Paolo was helping his father, Dito, clean the rows of vines to prepare them for their winter sleep. The pickers had moved on to other vineyard rows, and Dito had already arranged contracts to sell their grapes to surrounding wineries; that left father and son alone in the stillness of the vineyard to put everything in order for the period of hibernation that came with the chill winds of autumn.

Vineyards were places of magic in brightly colored wine brochures and travel posters, but the dell'Uco family knew them as places of work. Agriculture of any stripe could be hard, back-breaking work, an occupation that shared its destiny with the vagaries of the weather, and Paolo had grown into this family enterprise but still resisted letting it grow in his heart.

Dito had more years on him and more seasons in the vineyard. He had worked the fields for most of his adult life and, although the effort sometimes showed on his face, he never regretted it. His fruit would be bottled by other families who owned the wineries and Dito knew that these grapes would make fine wine.

Paolo yanked the hat back in place to shield his face from the sun and coughed a bit of dust from his throat. He was young and strong and he didn't intend to turn gray-haired and worn in this vineyard. The dell'Ucos would go on, but he had bigger thoughts, bigger dreams than filling the fermentation vats of the families who put their name on the bottles of wine.

Dito kept his head bent toward the ground and just kept raking the discarded grapes and random twigs and broken branches in the furrow between the rows of vines. Paolo looked at his father with a slight dose of pity, and he was immediately embarrassed by the emotion. Still, he wondered why his father would want to spend his years growing someone else's wine.

He studied his father's stocky figure, a body that seemed well designed for farm work. His legs and arms were short but muscled, his strong neck was darkened by years of working outside, and the lines on his face were like the rivulets of time, chronicling the mixture of good times and bad, but most of all they served as a badge of honor for a man who had never let up in the relentless labor of farming.

Paolo wished his father would make the wine that his fruit would yield in someone else's fattoria, an inelegant Italian word for “farm” that was commonly used to refer to wineries across this storied land.

“I'm a farmer, not a winemaker,” Dito always reminded him. Sometimes the declaration was made with chin held high, proud of his connection to the earth, but sometimes Dito's gaze dropped ever so slightly, the glitter of pride in his eyes a bit more subdued, enough that Paolo detected a note of sadness in his father's voice. Winemaking in Sinalunga, and the entire region of Tuscany around it, was a noble calling, an industry that is both science and art, and one that preserved a tradition of excellence that Italy promoted around the world. But in their little world between the vines here in Sinalunga, not far from Siena, Paolo sensed that winemaking was out of their reach. The vineyard provided a steady income, but not the riches that would be required to build a winery and establish a winemaking enterprise.

“It doesn't matter, anyway,” Paolo mumbled to himself. “I won't be here for long. I don't want to be here for long.”

Dito was now the one to stand and stretch his sore back, stealing a glance in the direction of his son and only child. They exchanged a brief look, but Paolo shied away from the glance so that his father would not see him standing idle, as he bent back over the rake and returned to the dusty business at hand.

Paolo passed his time dreaming about his plans. He began his campaign with his mother almost a month earlier, suggesting in an off-hand way that he might want to go to America. There are things to do there, he said, “Maybe I'll discover what I want to be in life.” Paolo was twenty-three years old, old enough to dream of a future different from the path his parents chose, yet young enough to let dreams override common sense.

At least that's how his mother, Catrina, put it the first time he raised the idea.

“America is a wonderful place,” she said, never looking up from the laundry she was folding, “or so we're told. But we have no family there and your father needs you. What would you do in America until this great day when you 'discover what you want to be?' ”

That put an end to the conversation, that day at least, but Catrina's words only convinced Paolo that he needed to think it through more thoroughly and come up with answers to the questions his mother would undoubtedly ask next time.

A few weeks later, Paolo was ready. He raised the subject again at dinner, daring to broach it in front of both parents. Dito didn't look up from his plate of pasta, and broke off mouthfuls of Catrina's freshly baked bread without raising his head to look at his son.

“I think I could go to America to visit, see New York and maybe Washington,” Paolo began tentatively, touching the Nationals cap that he had hung on the chair beside him, as if it were some kind of talisman. His father still didn't acknowledge the conversation, but Catrina responded.

“That sounds nice. What would you do there?”

“Maybe, first, I could just visit. Maybe I would discover that there was something I could do there. And, maybe I would find a job,” he replied, but his hesitation and string of 'maybes' proved that he still didn't have the answers.

The meal ended without Dito engaging the topic. When the food was eaten and the last glass of wine was poured, he stood and asked his son to bring the file on wine buyers in so he could look it over and plan next year's crop.