"Monte Pulciano d'ogni vino e il Re."
The brilliant purple colour, like an amethyst, of this noble wine is unlike any other. The aromatic odour is delicious; its sweetness is tempered by an agreeable sharpness and astringency; it leaves a flattering flavour on the tongue.
These best Italian wines have a deliciousness which eludes analysis, like the famous Monte Beni, which old Tommaso produced in a small straw-covered flask at the visit of Kenyon to Donatello. This invaluable wine was of a pale golden hue, like other of the rarest Italian wines, and if carelessly and irreligiously quaffed, might have been mistaken for a sort of champagne. It was not, however, an effervescing wine, although its delicate piquancy produced a somewhat similar effect upon the palate. Sipping, the guest longed to sip again, but the wine demanded so deliberate a pause in order to detect the hidden peculiarities, and subtile exquisiteness of its flavour, that to drink it was more a moral than a physical delight. There was a deliciousness in it which eluded description, and like whatever else that is superlatively good was perhaps better appreciated by the memory than by present consciousness. One of its most ethereal charms lay in the transitory life of the wine's richest qualities; for while it required a certain leisure and delay, yet if you lingered too long in the draught, it became disenchanted both of its fragrance and flavour. The lustre and colour should not be forgotten among the other good qualities of the Monte Beni wine, for "as it stood in Kenyon's glass, a little circle of light glowed on the table around about it as if it were really so much golden sunshine."
There are few wines worthy of this beautiful eloquence of Hawthorne. The description bears transportation; the wine did not. The transportation of even a few miles turned it sour. That is the trouble with Italian wines. Monte Pulciano and Chianti do bear transportation. Italy sends much of the latter wine to New York. Italy has, however, never produced a really good dry wine, with all its vineyards.
The dark Grignolino wine grown in the vineyards of Asterau and Monferrato possesses the remarkable quality of keeping better if diluted with fresh water.
The Falernian from the Bay of Naples, is the wine of the poets, nor need we remind the classical scholar that the hills around Rome were formerly supposed to produce it.
The loose, volcanic soil about Mount Vesuvius grows the grapes from which Lacryma Christi is produced. It is sometimes of a rich red colour, though white and sparkling varieties are produced.
The Italians are supremely fond of al fresco entertainments,—their fine climate making out-of-door eating very agreeable. How many a traveller remembers the breakfast or dinner in a vine-covered loggia overhanging some splendid scene! It forms the subject of many a picture, from those which illustrate the stories of Boccaccio up to the beautiful sketch of Tasso, at the court of the Duc d'Este. The dangers of these feasts have been immortalized in verse and prose from Dante down, and Shakspeare has touched upon them twice. George Eliot describes one in a "loggia joining on a garden, with all one side of the room open, and with numerous groups of trees and statues and avenues of box, high enough to hide an assassin," in her wonderful novel of Romola. In modern days, since the Borgias are all killed, no one need fear to eat out-of-doors in Italy.
Not much can be said of the cookery of Spain. In the principal hotels of Spain one gets all the evils of both Spanish and Gascon cookery. Garlic is the favourite flavour, and the bad oil expressed from the olive, skin, seed and all, allowed to stand until it is rancid, is beloved of the Spanish, but hated by all other nations. I believe, however, that an olla podrida made in a Spanish house is very good. It may not be inappropriate here to give two recipes for macaroni. The first, macaroni au gratin is very rarely found good in an American house:—
Break two ounces of best Italian macaroni into a pint of highly seasoned stock, let it simmer until very tender. When done, toss it up with a small piece of butter, and add pepper and salt to taste; put in a large meat dish, sift over it some fried bread-crumbs, and serve. It will take about an hour to cook, and should be covered with the stock all the time.