Falanghina...

I thought I'd do some research. We first discovered Falanghina a couple of years ago - more rounded on the palate than the white wines from further north like Frascati or Pinot Grigio, but still with an agreeable degree of crispness. Only patchily available until recently - although that is as much a reflection of the re-stocking eccentricities of enotecas and italian supermarkets as anything else - now, you can barely move for falling over the stuff! Which is no bad thing...

And the research was well worth the effort, since it appears that Falanghina is no more nor less than the famous Falernium wine so beloved of the Romans, two thousand years ago. Apparently, there was a particularly good vintage in 121 BC, which went down in the annals and was spoken of with awe for decades - if not centuries - to follow. I'd like to think I recognised the name from all those years of wading through Cicero and Tacitus, but I suspect it's more likely the influence of Robert Harris's imperial pot-boilers...

The Falanghina grape derives etymologically from the latin 'Phalernimum' - i.e from Falerno - and there's some idea that it was used at that time to make a sweet wine, although I haven't found any supporting evidence for that particular assertion. The idea of ancient wines being naturally sweet always seems unlikely to me, given some experience of the sort of wines produced in primitive communities in Greece, where the process is presumably unchanged from several millenia ago. The end result tends to be thin and harsh, with every inducement to add things like honey and herbs in order to make the stuff drinkable at all...

Anyway, it seems that Falernium continued to be popular in its various guises right through until the early twentieth century, when it was suddenly practically wiped out when Phylloxera hit the vineyards of Campania, and it disappeared off the map for a good fifty years or so. Painstakingly reintroduced over the past quarter century, it seems now to have clawed its way back to a position of some eminence. At the scrubbing-alcohol end of the scale, for five euros a bottle it makes very good house wine....and if you want to push the boat out and indulge in a more sophisticated version, for a few euros more, then the choices are absolutely excellent! Highly recommended...

Meanwhile, we're having the hottest summer here that we've had for five years...the Technical Department is sweating it out at the top of a scaffolding tower as he restores the ceiling painting in the Loggia, and every so often it's necessary to resort to standing shoulder deep in the lily pond, quaffing ice cold glasses of Kir (made not with Cassis - we've run out - but with a local version made with Myrtle Berries; slightly medicinal in flavour, but not entirely unpleasant for all that...)

Tonight's Dinner:

Crespelle stuffed with Bechamel, Spinach & Ragu.

Capponi (a beautiful red fish, one of the Gurnard family) cooked in sephardic fashion.

Passion Fruit Tarts.