Stone upon stone: an Italian sojourn: Etruscan sun and red red wine

The Etruscans built settlements in Tuscany, too.

Just a few minutes drive from where we live on a slope overlooking the glorious Tuscan countryside a band of merry Etruscans had a settlement built that, to this day, is still called Pava, an Etruscan word. Now it is green, ploughed and planted with grain, but archeologists tell the tales of fifteen or more settlement houses with their temple at the top of the hill which they decorated with their own clay-fired ornaments, like finials, for adornment.

Potters and iron-smelters worked and worshipped in Pava and if they were alive today would have looked across to a neighbouring hill of postcard prettiness.

Further down the hill, a large excavation is taking place on a later Roman church and burial site which has a site hut and office for summer digs and covered trenches partially dug. We explored this, too. It is already well posted with signs and dig information and was a lovely morning walk in the countryside beneath the Etruscan sun.

The outline of the foundations for their church is quite clear. And graves have been found around it for some 900 folk buried, over time, in the church grounds: a tall, well built people, who likely lived on home-grown lamb and pork, so statuesque for the time they were. The most poignant find was a young girl, buried early in the seventh century AD, wearing her lifetime collection of jewellery: her finger ring, two delicate earrings and a necklace made with 180 coloured glass beads, an ornament she clearly treasured, as later, she had added a Roman coin drilled to string with her beads: shiny and coveted.

We drove on, then, to the high village of Montalcino, which has prized grapes growing all over its lower slopes. Montalcino is famous for Brunello wine. Once growers and wine makers thought the grape growing on this slope was a distinctive, and singular, variety which they called Brunello. Later, the grape was found to be a strain of Sangiovese, but by then the Brunello wine was so prized that Brunello became the designation used for wines made from 100% Sangiovese grapes. It became the first wine to receive the prized Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG) designation and is blood red, delicious and expensive compared with many other Italian wines. But worth it.

So popular is this wine that vineyards around Montalcino have exploded from eleven some fifty years ago, to over two hundred growers now. Every second shop on the steep streets of Montalcino is a wine tasting shop: all expensive, beautiful and stylish. Wine is big business nowadays in Montalcino and has overtaken leather which used to provide the main income for many of the townsfolk. They still make honey, salted meat, olive oil and cheese so the sale of salumi platters to enjoy with your wine tasting is big business.

We hunted for a home-grown mum and dad lunch place instead, and found one, in a side lane that eventually half the town also frequented for lunch.

We had--and this is becoming a daily phenomenon--another amazingly memorable lunch: starting with nibbles of yummy toppings on crostini: whole buttered mushrooms meltingly tender; home-made pate of chicken liver, then a white truffle cream topping--all to die for. Again, we gobbled it all up before we thought to take photos. We followed that with a wild boar stew for Pete, a tiny twisted finger pasta dish for Bec, advertised as 'three fingers' which amused her, and I chose the ricotta and truffle ravioli which was so unbelievably good I made a special trip to the kitchen to propose to the chef, who was dancing alone in his tiny kitchen, enjoying himself, creating magic. I would eat there every day if I could.

We continued our trek uphill until we came to the fortress at the top. So high, cars on country roads look like toys from here. Like Siena, Montalcino was a warring city, albeit not as populated or powerful. Like Siena it had its wins and losses, but eventually it became a satellite of Siena, and as happens with satellites, their fate revolves around the fate of their host. In all those wars and battles, though this fortress was never once breached. And it is not really all that surprising, as the access routes are sharp rises from downhill that you can see all the way from the top. Enemies coming at you would be visible on all sides.

Like Sienna, Montalcino has contradas, different quarters of the town that have their own identity: with their own songs, their own colours, their own drum rhythms; and like Sienna, they gather twice a year. Here, though, beneath the walls of the fortress they come together in medieval clothes and on special days participate in archery contests. Playing out their history in modern times.

Church bells chimed every hour we were visiting. We started the long trek downhill and ran across a group of four young men who'd had a very enjoyable, very chatty lunch in our trattoria, who were now taking a siesta break in one of the gardens in the sun. Even the young Italian men feel the need. Well, they were likely up doing the round of bars until well after midnight, as is the tradition, truth be told. Tourists don't, of course. The time tourists are out and about exploring is the time Italy sleeps, when most shops in villages like this still close. I don't think, now, even after all these decades of pressure to change, that this tradition is going to vary. At least not anytime soon. Italians know how to eat, drink and be merry -- and for them it is a good life.

Down and down we go with just the occasional peek into the occasional church to see the splashes of gold, white and sunlight that bedeck the altars. Or the little pops of colour that decorate a stone wall niche outside someone's home. Such a lovely day.