Coppi Capers

 

Coppi Capers

My guess, Margaret wanted out.  “Wanted out” borders on a colloquial understatement I once heard as a child from a house painter my dad had hired.  It was his way of telling us that his mother had up and left home.  He’d said, “She just wanted out”.  In my time, I have no equivalent.  The closest turn of phrase I can come up with to describe literally walking out on responsibility, as when someone hasn’t studied for a test and has no care in the outcome would be “I’ll take a zero”, or as my granddaughter describes it these days, “Take the L” (loss).  For those new to my rants, Marge, who often wants out and takes a zero at our loss, is our GPS of many years. By now she is well indoctrinated in our ways and familiar with our haunts.  You’d think that after so many years she would have developed some loyalty, but absent anything approaching a neural network or an artificial intelligence, she hasn’t learned a thing.  Nowhere near as good a listener as Alexa or as talkative as Siri, hers is a free-spirited mind, known to stray.  With so much GPS trickery, God help us if the world ever does go completely driverless and future descendants of Margaret, coupled to a car, are let loose on their own.  Forewarned of her tendencies to explore new places and recalling the time she took us through a cow paddy where I’m sure few had ventured before, we bridle her with maps the old-fashioned way and keep close watch on her, just to be safe.  A recent case in point was the time she brought us to a stonewall lined road in the middle of nowhere, in the heel of Italy known as Puglia, and announced in her English prissiness that we’d arrived.  Yes, she speaks in the British vernacular, which with her “roundabouts” and “slip roads” approaches something intriguingly exotic to our American ears.

And here my story begins to unspool ... This being completely unfamiliar territory, we’d relied on Margaret to get us to our destination.  By this point, pulled over to the side of the road, a quick look through the shimmer of the Apulian heat, revealed not a structure or sign of civilization in sight other than the wildment of boundless fields marching to the horizon bordered by sun-baked stone walls.  No-doubt, the only

nearby homes belonged to darting geckos and little else.  It was evident, we weren’t even close.   We’d hoped to have been on Strada Provinciale Turi approaching Gioia del Colle, home to the Coppi Winery under the longtime leadership of Antonio Coppi, but at this point, only God and possibly three orbiting GPS satellites knew our whereabouts.   We had arranged this visit months earlier with the help of a friend in the States, a former RAF pilot turned sommelier by the name of Rufus.  Ah, that romantic British influence again, this time simply in a name.  Rufus had been to the Coppi Winery and knew our host.  With no one about to ask, I called for help, not to the Italian Auto Club but to one of the Coppi numbers I’d brought with me for just such a situation.  A man answered; I could hear a baby crying in the background.  Could this be the home of the Coppi Winery?  Doubtful.  It just didn’t sound right.  After a few interchanges, I had quickly exhausted my knowledge of Italian only to discover that I’d reached a home in Benevento, a city hundreds of miles away in Campania, near Naples actually.  I must have misdialed, at least I prayed I had.  Maybe the heat was getting to me.  Might I next expect to see a shimmering mirage-like image of some wine bottle off in the distance?

I punched at the numbers again.  Thankfully, this time, Roberto, the operations manager of the Coppi Winery answered.  Apparently, I hadn’t gone completely daft.  Although for my part I couldn’t explain where we were for lack of any landmarks other than rolling countryside and some cactuses, he advised us to find SS172 and head toward Polignano, and of all things, look for a giant wine bottle.  A giant bottle?  The thought of that misty mirage returned.  Apparently, the bottle was real, not some invented figment of my imagination.  Off again, we entered a new destination into Margaret, this time an entire town to be exact, soon found the highway, and drove for a while until we came to a rotary. At the rotary I took the first exit with my fingers crossed in hope that I’d made the right choice.  After a while, I pulled over and asked a man in a nearby field where the winery might be hiding.  At his direction, we turned around.  Why not, when you’re basically lost?  He said it was 4 km in the opposite direction, right by the rotary!  By then, I wasn’t a bit surprised by anything.  Sure enough, of all things, a giant Coppi wine bottle rose near the roundabout.  It pointed skyward like a missile ready for launch and marked the entry to the Coppi headquarters and processing plant.  How we’d not seen this beacon to Bacchus earlier, I’ve no explanation beyond our fixation on trying to quickly read the rotary signs that peppered the rotary exits or gone round and round a few times trying to take them all in.  Nevertheless, there it was, as advertised, off to one side of the roundabout. 

I like roundabouts.  They’re efficient and in the scheme of things their numbers make them economical on saving gas without having to wait around for lights to change.  However, in this case, offered in my defense, if we’d had to stop at the intersection, we might have had time to look around and spot that bottle rocket.  Inefficient and bungling as it had been, we certainly found our destination in a round-about manner.  After our morning ride from Calitri, Margaret’s navigational antics, and missteps going round’en round roundabouts, right about then, as I homed-in on the giant bottle, a glass (or two) of refreshment was more than appealing.  As for Margaret, she’d stay in the car.

The Coppi Winery is a family run operation with a story stretching back to 1882.  That was the year, absent any fanfare or ribbon cutting, that things got underway.  Times were far simpler then; the phenomenon of the 24/7 news blitz hadn’t even been imagined.  Understandably, its opening didn’t make headlines.  The modern winery we’d visit that day owes its birth and history to oenologist Antonio Coppi, who bought the wine cellars in 1979 when the previous owner moved to Tuscany.  Antonio and his wife made the perfect pair; his wife,

the daughter of the previous owner, had a deep understanding of place, a visceral bond with the land, and knew the fields while Antonio knew the art of making wine.  Together they nurtured the grapes and turned the business into the modern “vinicola” it is today.  Its location between the Ionian Sea to the west and Adriatic Sea to the east, on hilltop terrain 250 meters above sea level make an ideal climate to grow grapes.  Fanning gentle breezes, a warming southern Italian sun, and soil rich in nutrients combine to create a microclimate capable of producing the best wines of Puglia.  We’d heard all this before we arrived from Rufus, so it was with anticipation that we watched the entry gate swing open and drove into their reception area.

Roberto greeted us at the door.  He was a tall, lanky fellow with a receding hairline of short curly hair, graying on the sides.  While he was casually dressed in a red sweater, what caught my  attention were the blue rimmed glasses he wore, a popular accent in Italy, above an infectious smile. Thankfully, he had an excellent command of English.  Following introductions, he led us on a tour of the facility.  I had a sense of what was coming from the blend of the modern with old ways out in the yard where laundry fluttered from a line adjacent to a stone wall corralling a solar collector field.  My interest was piqued from the start when a truck happened to arrive full of grapes.  It likely came from one of their 100 hectares of vineyards or the additional 100 hectares of leased land that combine to produce just shy of a million bottles of  wine annually. Once the truck was parked for unloading, a lance, like a giant bee’s stinger, was lowered into the grapes.  I’d never seen such a device.  Roberto explained that what we were seeing was a probe to sample the must, the juicy mix of skins, seeds, and fruit stems at the bottom of the truck-bed.  Testing was underway to insure the grapes met the winery’s strict quality requirements.  It was our first indication, one of many, of how nothing was left to chance.  Strict control of the variables involved in winemaking, from the “training” of the vines to exacting temperature regime maintenance and continuous laboratory analysis affirmed their sophisticated approach to every phase of production.  Theirs was a story that continues forward with innovation and advanced technology, where passion, tradition, and innovation join to spur on the family’s dream first formed many, many years ago. 

Leaving behind the paraphernalia of winemaking, a mix of piping, hoses, stainless steel tanks,

pumps, and rubber boots, we moved inside.   We were immediately struck by how modern the facilities were.  There were the upper cellars, of course. with barrels and tanks, some made of concrete, in addition to the ancient underground cellars referred to as the “Temple of Primitivo”, a major varietal.  There was also the innovation of a small colorful tasting room for just about each of their wines.  Unknown to us, northern Italians apparently like to stand while they sip their wine as opposed to southerners who would rather sit, two to three hours at a time, with food and wine.  This correlated well with our own experience where without the accompaniment of something to eat, you just didn’t see people sitting around in Calitri sipping wine.
  

As an accommodation, this behavior may explain the existence of the struzzichini, a finger food on the level of Spanish tapas, something small to eat while enjoying your wine.  With the idea of accommodating northerners, a room was arranged with long, narrow, double-sided tables suspended from pipes, floor to ceiling, providing a pub type counter to stand around.  Another highly impressive feature was their banquet center.  This more formal area, that included a fireplace and an open kitchen, served to entertain large groups, possibly those southern Italians who like to sit a spell and “manga” while savoring their wine.

There was little chance that their heritage would be lost in the blinking lights, dials, spectrometers, and gauges of their modern facility.  To this end, the Coppi headquarters showcased a museum featuring their winemaking past.  In fact, while we were there, a school group was examining the museum’s carts, presses, scales, barrels, wall maps, demijohns, and photos that capture the history of the Apulian wine industry once little known and considered third-rate.  In many ways it had been snubbed by the rest of the Italian wine “mainstream”.  But all this has changed from the days that wine firms in Apulia could be counted on the fingers of one hand and their wines were used as “fillers” and “mixers” for wines produced as far away as France.  That has all changed.  Today Coppi wines are the pride of Apulia wine production. 

With all the buildup, we eagerly awaited a taste of their sunshine in a bottle, for proof in the pudding lay in the tasting.  That moment arrived when we entered their beautiful wine bar.  It was a challenge to decide on what to try for they produced a variety of both red and white wines.  The reds included various types of Primitivo wines in addition to their “Pellirosso” Negroamaro and “Sannace” Malvasia grape varietals.  Antonio had been a Senator in the Italian Parliament, so we were interested in the D.O.C. “Senatore” Primitivo, a wine brewed to commemorate his achievement.  The whites were more limited but included Falanghina and Malvasia, with one, a bubbly “frizzante bianco”.  We relied on Roberto to guide us, who proved generous with the choices and pours.  We may have tried them all, I’m not sure.  Thankfully, we had only four kilometers to go to arrive at our hotel which we’d passed along the way during our hunt for that elusive wine bottle mirage.

Our visit concluded with a stop by the office where we met the family patriarch himself, Senator Antonio Coppi.   During his celebrated career, he’d also been an auto enthusiast and took us to see his cache of classic automobiles.  Approximately twenty vintage Alfa Romeos, Ferraris, Peugeots, Fiats, and many others I could only guess to name filled a large garage.  Clearly Antonio’s love for automobiles, a common trait among Italian males, was evident.  Our visit had been worth all the angst of getting there and we departed with our own cache -   plenty of bottles of Coppi wine to later celebrate the memory of our visit for days to come.  As we pulled away from the facility and passed the bottle poised for launch, I had to admit that this was the most advanced and aesthetically pleasing winery

we’d ever visited.  While it hadn’t been rocket science, it had been all about wine science.  It was an eye-opener to glimpse the achievements of a man who from the beginning considered it his mission to bring dignity and prestige to Apulian wine production.  His mission accomplished from a lifetime of demanding work, steadfast persistence, sacrifice, and farsightedness, today his wines occupy a leadership position and are known the world over.

     It took only minutes to arrive at Hotel Relais Antica Masseria.  Surrounded by acres of grapes, we found it immediately both tranquil and relaxing.  For a late lunch, we were fortunate to be able to share in a much-attended luncheon prepared for a centenarian’s birthday celebration then underway.  We congratulated her on achieving her happy 100^th and though we didn’t join in the official festivities, we did get to share in the fare at a side room table since the kitchen was totally preoccupied with the birthday and ordering from the menu was out of the question.  There was so much food, it didn’t take much more than the antipasto before our appetites were more than satisfied.  Our festive repast and all the top-notch wine nicely tucked away, it was early to bed.

We were off early the next morning.  The day started promising enough.  Our plan was to visit the Grotto di Castellana caves in nearby Putignano followed by lunch in Monopoli, a timeless coastal town washed by the flickering waves of the Adriatic.  Unfortunately, both would have to wait another day for we had our first sort of breakdown with Bianca.  Honestly, in the scheme of breakdowns, it was a minor inconvenience just serious enough to prevent us from continuing our vacation within a vacation, though not so serious that we couldn’t continue to drive Bianca.  As they go, this was a simple one, we just couldn’t close a window!  We needed the electric window fixed.  There were several reasons why; a forecast of rain the most immediate.  More importantly, a fix was important for the safekeeping of the items inside our car like luggage, a computer, my camera, even our passports.  If we chose to stop to visit the grotto for instance, Bianca would have been wide open.  Since our plans for the day had been altered, we chose a safer course and headed home to Calitri.  So much for plans that at times seem only useful to start a second set of plans.  Our new plan - along the way, it being only 10am, we’d try to get Bianca fixed. 

We would be passing close to Canosa de Puglia.  Canosa, known to the Romans as Canusium, is one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in Italy.  Fiats, as ubiquitous as they are in Italy, and Canosa, being as large as it is, we were confident there would be a garage there that could fix Bianca’s window.  The only issue was where.  As luck would have it, our friend Pietro lived in Canosa, so I gave him a call.  I caught up with him at work.  He recommended "Point Service Autofficina" a garage on Via Balila.  Ironically, this “auto doctor" was just down the street from the city hospital.  The miracle of it was that we were in the garage’s “operating room” within minutes of our arrival.  After a while, it seemed the only issue would be in getting released from the “autofficina clinic”.  There were complications beginning with the hour it took to dismantle the door.  The door mechanism had a kinked cable and the entire unit had to be ordered which would not arrive until 3pm.  Then there would be the time needed to reassemble everything.  Tick-tock, tick-tock - thankfully we weren’t in any hurry.  If there was any consolation in the delay, it lay in the fact that at least it was during the shop’s normal afternoon shut down period.  Fortunately, one delay didn’t follow the other; for the most part they were concurrent. 

While we weren’t in the city’s center, there were a few distractions nearby to keep us occupied, one of which included lunch.  First, we took a walk and poked around a few stores.  It seems we used

our time in support of globalism when we bought some BIC razors made in Greece and a kitchen sink garbage strainer from Canada in of all places, a Chinese operated casalinghi (a home-goods store).  I should add, sold to Americans in Italy.  We had a few nearby choices for lunch.  Immediately across the street from the garage was “La Braceria”, a welcoming place that specialized in pollo alla brace (grilled chicken).  They also offered the choice of a pizza and a drink (7 Euros) or just shy of double that, a “tourist menu” of either salmon, swordfish or shrimp, a drink, and coffee or an Italian herbal liqueur called Amano.  While appealing, we kept looking.  It was on a corner, a few doors away from the garage, where we came upon another choice, the one we settled on named the “Locanda di Nunno”, after its chef, Antonio de Nunno.  Our light lunch, as we waited on our repair, turned into something more like a full-blown dinner.  If there was any grease on my hands, it came from the grilled steak, potatoes, and salad on my plate that Chef Nunno’s description had sold us on, not the greasy insides of our car door.  Seldom do we order the same meals but on that particular afternoon, as the sky darkened heralding an approaching storm, we did.  Although for me pasta is my go-to food, sometimes the craving arises, and I just have to cut into a steak.  For Maria Elena, steak is always welcome.  It had all the makings of an American style barbecue too, especially with all those crosshatched grill marks on the steaks.  There was more.  Mare finished her lunch with a Cassatina di Ricotta con Gelato al Pistacchio, a Sicilian cheese filled dessert with ice cream while for dessert drinks we enjoyed “Muscotto Passito”.  Passito is an Italian word for wine made by the appassimento process where grapes are partially dried on straw mats in airy rooms to concentrate the grapes’ flavors and sweetness prior to vinification.  As the grapes shrivel and lose water they become full of concentrated sugars.  Most passito wines spend time in oak barrels to develop further complex flavors in addition to time resting in their bottles prior to sale.  It seems car problems can have their silver linings.

When we reluctantly set off for the garage under lowered skies, we were thankful it wasn’t raining ... our umbrellas were inside Bianca.  With fingers crossed, we returned at 3pm hoping the garage team had beat us back.  They hadn’t.  The garage doors still down and locked, we waited, sitting on a stoop outside the garage.  Minutes later, as the tattoo of rain made its debut, first one, then a second mechanic arrived followed soon after by the boss, Ciros.  He favored us with an innocent smile as he waved a box to signal that he had the part.  Apparently, there wasn’t a parts delivery

service that I thought we were waiting on.  Instead Ciros stopped off to get the part while he was at lunch.  About an hour later, Bianca’s window was once again responsive to the push of a button. However, when they put her in reverse to back her out from under another car up on a lift (it was a small place), I noticed that one of the back-up lights wasn’t working.  I pointed this out to the mechanic only to learn I was both right and wrong.  First off, there was no reverse light on one side, but according to the mechanic and Ciros this was by design in Italian vehicles – only one reverse taillight is required.  Such an asymmetrical arrangement seemed strange to me.  I wondered what other countries required only one reverse light?  Funny, I’d not noticed this before.  I wondered, could they have been playing a practical joke on me?  Had this turned into something on the order of a “snipe hunt” fool’s errand or was I rhetorically being baited to believe in a “left-handed monkey wrench”?  Doubtful.  I took their word for it, hesitantly aware of my foreignness on the matter.  Instead, having dodged a need to wait for a bulb to be replaced and now with all windows A-ok, we were discharged from the car clinic.  The team at Point Service Autofficina had certainly been wonderful.  They’d understood our urgent concern and resolved the problem, all as walk-ins, without an appointment. 

Hours later, after we’d arrived safely home in Calitri and Bianca, windows up, was parked in the borgo piazza, Maria Elena was not feeling well.  Her feet ached, her head was feverish, and she’d developed a cough that could be heard over and over throughout our 80 square meter home as she lay in bed, wrapped in her thick bathrobe.  Riding so long with her window down, the swirling stormy air had probably taken a toll.  I’m pretty sure that’s what nine out of ten Calitrani would have pointed to as the culprit.  For times such as this, I turn for help to her favorite comfort food - some hot tomato soup and crackers.  When I asked her if she wanted some Coppi vino to accompany her soup, I knew she wasn’t going to die when she replied, “I’m sick, not crazy.”  As poet Pablo Neruda once eloquently said “…. He dies slowly, he who does not travel, …”, but not Maria Elena, not that day.

From that Rogue Tourist

Paolo