This year, thanks to an exceptionally dry spell, la Vendemmia, or grape-picking for wine-making, has been going swimmingly well. It’s an occasion for bringing friends and family together and returning to one’s rural roots.

Fortunately, many Italians have kept ancestral homes and lands in the country as Italy, unlike the UK, with its nineteenth century industrial revolution, has only become a predominantly urban centred society since the last war. In 1945 over half the population was engaged as agricultural workers. Now it’s just over 5%.

I joined in a vendemmia last week-end in the beautiful hills of the Compitese between Lucca and Pisa. Since they are rather gentler than the slopes we have around here it meant that the vineyards were much easier to work.

The grapes were transported to a press which cleverly separated the grapes from their stems and leaves and formed a must which was poured into a fermenting vat.

Here it will stay for some weeks and be stirred daily to encourage the fermentation process.

We had a beautifully extended lunch break with some excellent samples from that other harvest’, the spaghetti one (!)

The end product is, of course, Bacchus’ gift to mankind.

As the final lines of Handel’s ‘Bawdy’ (to use the eighteenth century’s description) oratorio ‘Semele’ puts it neatly:

From Semele’s ashes a phoenix shall rise,
The joy of this earth, and delight of the skies:
A God he shall prove
More mighty than Love,
And sighing and sorrow for ever prevent.

Happy, happy shall we be,
Free from care, from sorrow free.
Guiltless pleasures we’ll enjoy,
Virtuous love will never cloy;
All that’s good and just we’ll prove,
And Bacchus crown the joys of love.

It was as an eight-year old that I discovered the obvious difference between Italy and the United Kingdom. One was a wine country and the other wasn’t (although it’s fair to say it’s making rapid progress to catch up in that direction, thanks to climate change and cultural tastes).