Gettin’ The Grape

Pretty much all my life, late September has meant home winemaking time. I know exactly how a 36 pound box of Moscato and a 42 pound box of Alicante should feel in my arms; in fact, it was a milestone when my two sons, in turn and long ago, reached those weights.  When the air turns cool and crisp in the autumn, others smell pumpkin latte or apple picking time; me, I smell crush time for the homemade wine.

It is a family tradition on my mother’s side that has not yet skipped a generation, at least on my line. My maternal ancestors all made wine in our historic town of Anagni, Italy, about 40 kilometers south or Rome. When my grandparents emigrated to the US, they adjusted to their new environs; there were no wine grapes grown in the Bronx, NY, but the Bronx Terminal Market offered wine grapes shipped in from California. When my grandparents acquired their first home in the 1920s, my grandfather found the supple bedrock on which the house rested to be an ideal foil for his winemaking desires. Each night after work, he would go down to the cellar and, bit by bit, chip out a cantina to make and store his wine. He stood 5’4”, and with his fedora reached 5’5”, so he carved the cellar to be 5’5.5”. When his taller sons complained, he offered them the hammer and chisel to expand. Nobody accepted. Everybody stooped – better yet, bowed – to make Papa Joe’s wine.

Neither Papa Joe or Nana Maria could drive, but they always found their way to the Bronx Terminal Market in the fall to buy “the grape.” That’s how it has always been referred to – and their son, my Uncle Fiore, was steadfast about that point. We don’t get grapes, plural, for homemade wine, we get the singular grape, even if it comes in 20 boxes. The precise reasoning is buried with him, but to this day, every September, when the air feels right and my 21^st century schedule aligns, I announce that I am going out to get ‘the grape,’ as I did today. When Giuseppe and Maria got to the market, however they got there [I know in latter years one of their sons drove them there] they would pick out the best ‘lugs,’ as the wooden boxes of grapes were/are called, and my illiterate grandmother would mark each one in chalk with an “X” to make sure they got what they saw and chose. Then, to doubly insure, one of them would ride in the delivery truck to their Vyse Avenue home to make sure there were no shenanigans on the road. 

Today I made that annual pilgrimage; not to the Bronx, but to nearby Glen Cove, where I first accompanied my parents in 1975 to meet Dominick and Angelina Izzo, purveyors of ‘the grape.’ Forty three years later, Dominick is long gone but I have the pleasure of continuing business with his son Lorenzo, son-in-law Anthony, and their sons who have joined the seasonal family business as well. I can always count on a hug, a discussion on the condition of the fruit, news of family growth or passings, plenty of bees wanting a share of the fruit, and, inevitably, some old Italian men wanting to “kibbitz” (as our Jewish neighbors from the Bronx would say): why are you using that blend, where did you get that truck, why are you making the wine so early, blah blah blah – any excuse to poke their nose into somebody else’s business, and sneak a taste of  my ‘grape.’  It maddens me, but I would miss it if it didn’t happen.

Tomorrow, we crush the grape. All of it.