July 6, 2019: Manarola (Cinque Terre)
Beach Day!! We took the train to Monterosso and joined the 5,000 other people from Cinque Terre at the beach. It was hot and crowded. We got half day chairs, four in the shade and two in the sun. We couldn't sit out for long because of the heat so we headed down to the water right away. The water was clear and refreshing so we spent a lot of time in it. The only downfall were the stones on the way to the water. They were SO, SO HOT. My dad put one foot on them, yelped and immediately hopped back in his chair to put his gym shoes on. He wore his gymmies all the way down to the water and flipped them off right before diving in.
We left the beach around 2 and wandered through Monterosso to a pizza place. It had gluten free for mom and regular for us. Boy was it tasty! After lunch we took the train back to Manarola so we could get ready for the winery tour we had planned later in the evening. The winery was in Riomaggiore, which was one stop from Manarola on the train. When we arrived we were met by a friendly couple in their 70s who've been making sciacchetra (sweet wine) for generations. The six of us sat on wooden benches in their small cantina and watched a video that first showed the landscape of Cinque Terre and the hard, hard work it took to create the terraces on the hillside. Men worked to chip away at the rock while women carried baskets of dirt on their heads to fill in the chunked out areas. Roberto, the 71 year old winemaker who was sharing his story with us, was one of six siblings. His father, at age 18, after never having lived with electricity or running water, got on a ship bound for New York. He washed dishes to pay his way and then worked in New York for 10 years, all the while saving up money for his family. When he returned to Italy, he bought the land that his family currently uses for harvest. He and his children worked the land and planted many, many vines. However, when the US ships came to Italy, they brought diseases that devastated the crops. The US felt badly about this so cultivated healthy vines and brought them to the farmers of Cinque Terre for use. To this day, Roberto's family vineyard vines are grown from the US vines that were brought over so many years ago. Roberto prunes the vines by hand and then ties each one. He covers the vines with a sulfur compound so that the humidity doesn't cause the grapes to mold. He then tests the sugar levels. Once the levels are right, he picks the grapes by hand. After the grapes are picked they are separated by leaves and laid to dry. Bees are predators of the grapes come October, so all of the grapes have to be put in crates covered with netting. Then, the grapes are separated from the vines by hand in the cantina. Usually this is done with family members, but as Roberto has aged he's invited friends to help as well. He says that this coming together of family and friends is one of the most fun and most special parts of the winemaking process. After working hard with family friends Roberto puts the grapes through a press and into the vats to ferment. The process requires oxygen so Roberto stands on a stool with a long spoon and stirs the contents in the vats. Then he drains the vats and separates the skins from the liquid. The skins are then sent through a wooden press to ensure that all of the juice is extracted. The pressed juice, in addition to the original fermented liquid, is combined to make the sweet wine which is then bottled by hand at the cantina. Roberto and his wife make sciacchetra for family and friends but also make some to sell in their cantina. We're then told that some years yield better production than others due to weather conditions, but that all of the farmers in the area help one another out when there's a bad year. In fact, apparently this year was particularly poor for lemons, so Roberto and his wife's lemon crop didn't make it. Friends who grow lemons in other villages shared their crops so that Roberto wasn't lemon-less for the season. Roberto wants his story to be shared because Cinque Terre was built by the hard, hard work of his family, and sadly, his children and grandchildren do not want to continue the back breaking work that is wine making in the hillsides of Cinque Terre. The six of us really enjoyed spending time learning from this gruff 71 year old italian man with his thick accent and matter of fact british wife who spent much of her time correcting his english. The two were incredibly passionate about their life's work which made us appreciate the sciacchetra so much more when we were given a taste.
After saying our goodbyes we went to an outdoor patio for dinner. I had really tender bacala made with potatoes and olives that was fantastic. Candace ordered scampi, which I told her was a white fish. Ooops. It's actually shrimp. So when her plate came with two huge crustaceans, complete with shells, claws and eyeballs, she wasn't too please with me. After dinner we tried to get on the train back to Manarola but they run much, much less frequently in the evenings. While Candace, Jimmy and I went to find some gelato, Mark found a shuttle bus that would take us back for cheaper than the train so we hopped on. It took us through the mountains as it drove from town to town so we enjoyed beautiful night views of the seaside, hillside and small towns. It was another great day in Cinque Terre.
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