''It is ridiculous to speak of someone having friendship towards wine or a horse." So wrote St Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, 2a 2 , 23, 1). However, as I explained to Sam the horse while preparing him for our forthcoming acts of civil disobedience, there is a kind of side-by-sideness - or, at any rate, on-top-underneathness - that make man and horse as thick as thieves when called upon to defy oppressive legislation. And wine, too, can offer the comfort of a friend when given its proper place at the close of day, in cups raised to the defeat of bigotry.
Social emotions vary with the climate, and nowhere is the effect of this more visible than in Italy, where everything - wine, horses, friendship, thought - gets more lively and less reliable as you travel south. Piedmontese friendships are slow to form and durable. Sicilian friendships spring up over breakfast, and are lost before lunch. That is why Sicilians rely so heavily on family connections: nothing else can be trusted.
The contrast can be observed, too, in Italy's wines. Those of Piedmont were the first to be sold as luxury items on the British market, and their neoclassical demeanour and civilised reticence are legendary. By contrast, the wines of Sicily have travelled to Britain only in the form of Marsala, made under British supervision and masked by fortification. Now, however, you can obtain first-class table wines from both ends of Italy.
In Piedmont, small producers compete to produce their well-bred, toffee-nosed versions of the two famous varietals - the Barbaresco and the Barolo - and the prices have risen accordingly. But wines from the lesser-known Barbera grape, grown in the hills of Asti, are still affordable, and an excellent example from the steepest slopes of the Asti region - the arbest, in the local dialect - is on sale at Berry's for roughly £13. The Bava brothers who produce this wine have managed to register Arbest as a trademark. But why not? Trademarks are the only limits that the World Trade Organisation respects, and therefore the only lasting defence against Monsanto.
The unification of Italy was a disaster for the north, which has had to compromise ever since with southern lawlessness. By contrast, the south acquired new markets for both business and crime, learning also that outside the family honesty is sometimes the second-best policy. Sicilian wines are beginning to show the result, and a particular example, the Planeta Santa Cecilia, made from the wonderful local grape called the Nero d'Avola, sent us into ecstasies. Rich and strong, with a satin finish, this wine is one of several expert discoveries offered by Tesco. It's not cheap (£18.99), but it cemented the friendship between me and Sam, and prepared us to go down fighting.
