Drink - Victoria Moore chooses Italian wine for a fearsome menu
Everyone is so rude about Italian wine. Try to make a collaborative choice from a wine list in a bar or restaurant and people will always turn their nose up at it. "Rather watery, don't you think?" they hazard, if confronted by a white. "Could be a bit rough," they frown when faced with a red. And it's not fair at all, really it isn't.
Wasn't it the Romans who marched the vine, along with their foot soldiers, across western Europe? Can such a long tradition of viticulture really have been wasted? True, many of Italy's exports are cheaper wines used by the French and Germans for blending, but Italy has more land under vine than any other country in the world, bar Spain. It's impossible to believe that it could all be so bad.
Romans are very proud of the local plonk. Lazio - or Latium as we used to anglicise it before "Football Italia" - is known first for its Frascati, now derided by British wine snobs, and second for its other whites, usually blends of Malvasia and Trebbiano. Yet in Il Checchino, a Roman restaurant revered for its repertoire of local food and, indeed, its fine wine list, there is a healthy quantity of Lazio wine, both red and white.
Perhaps Hannibal Lector may care to dine here. In what were once wine cellars, opposite an old slaughterhouse, the chefs hack, saw, braise and boil their way through the fearsome menu: pressed calf's head, mixed roast calf's entrails (including small intestines and testicles), bite-size pieces of baby lamb and sauteed veal brains. The business of choosing a wine is taken, too, in deadly earnest. We order a bottle of Colle Picchioni 1997 - a vino da tavola, though this is no reason for our expectations to be lowered. In Italy, where the law is seen as something to twist and turn and slither to avoid, they often prefer not to submit their wines to the tedious restrictions and regulations required of a DOC. Table wines are, therefore, almost as likely to be purest nectar as straw-covered-Chianti bottle torture.
The waiter produces the wine bottle with a little flourish. As though taking part in some ancient bloodletting ritual, he vigorously swills a small quantity of wine round each glass. I've never seen this done before. It's a neat little tip. As soon as my nose goes anywhere near the glass, I am enveloped in the strong, fruity perfume of its wine. For under a tenner (the restaurant price), it's very good stuff: a blend of Merlot, Sangiovese and Montepulciano with a bit of Cabernet Sauvignon. What a shame it's not imported to Britain - it's such tremendously good value and quite delicious.
Far too cowardly to sink our teeth into brains and bones, we forgo the offal in favour of main courses that are far less Roman and no less good for being so. The most terrible choice we are faced with comes as we near the end of the wine bottle. The Italians enjoy their wine but they are not drunks: should we risk the disapproving glances that will surely come if we order another bottle, or should we move on? The menu decides for us. I love pecorino, the grainy ewe's milk cheese. At the waiter's suggestion, I swill it down with Marsala, the Sicilian fortified wine we all seem to have forgotten about, whose roundness is a perfect balance for the spicy cheese. My friend, opting for the less strong-flavoured parmigiano, is given a glass of Muffato della Sala - a wonderfully refreshing, apricotty dessert wine made by Castello della Sala in Umbria.
So you see, it's not all thin white table wine and palate-shiveringly harsh peasant reds.
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