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Many of you follow my husband David Ransom and I as we travel throughout
Sicily and Italy and Europe, and we love Sicily and this show is dedicated
to Sicily because we can't get enough of it, and apparently America cannot get
enough of Sicily either, because there have been numerous shows about Sicily, White
Lotus being the most recent that have attracted people to Sicily. But there is
a lot of Sicily to discover and a lot of people just head straight to
the coast. Well, my guest today is going to show you not only
how beautiful Sicily is coast to coast, but where she lives is in the
center the heart of Sicily and truly one of the most beautiful and pure areas
I have visited. The winery is called Fayuta Montoni, and Melissa Mueller is
the co proprietor with her husband Fabio Sarecchi. She is not only a co
proprietor, but she had formerly owned a couple of restaurants dedicated to Sicilian food
in New York and the author of a terrific book on Sicily called Sicily Recipes
Rooted in Tradition. Having come to know Melissa and having visited they to Montoni
myself, we can share with you the fact that she is probably one of
the most knowledgeable people on Sicilian food and culture today. And you are going
to love this show because we're going to dive into and take you by the
hand through the airwaves to Sicily so you can experience it and think about what
you can do to enjoy Sicily in your home, but also plan a visit.
Melissa. Welcome. Thank you, Melanie. It's such an honored to
be on your show, and also I'm very touched and fluttered by your lovely
introduction. Well, you have an amazing background, so we always like to
start with that you grew up in America, but you have Sicilian heritage,
So talk about your childhood and your heritage and how you ended up finding that
powerful reconnection back to your roots. Well, I must say that my whole
life has revolved around Sicily, either from living here now for the past ten
years, or just when I was away or what I call in exile from
Sicily and growing up in the New York, New Jersey area, where I
basically dedicated everything in my life to the island of Sicily. From a very
young age, I grew up coming every summer to my grandmother's village, which
is in the province of Agrigento on the southern coast of Sicily, a small
village called Santana, small in the sense that there's about four hundred inhabitants.
It's a direct contrast to Manhattan, where I grew up. Basically, the
love of Sicily that I have comes from that young age, and as a
child, I wanted to recreate in our home the perfumes and the smells and
the sensations that I felt around Sicily. So I started cooking at a very
young age, and my love of ingredients and recipes starts at that time.
But then as I grew up, I realized that I wanted to focus more
on the culture and the food culture of Sicily, not just on ingredients and
on cooking, but basically, what I felt was that food and Sicilian food
was a means for me to understand the culture and the history of these people
that I felt so connected with. So I started studying anthropology with a focus
on Mediterranean food culture. And I say Mediterranean because I felt to understand Sicily,
I needed to look at it in its broad context. So I studied
all the various regions and history and culture of surrounding Sicily, not only Sicily
itself. The love of Sicily only kept growing. So when I finished my
undergrad degree, before I moved on to my postgraduate degree, my goal was
to somehow find a way to represent Sicily. I started writing, I started
looking at different ways to do so. But September eleventh happened and I was
two, and so many restaurants, as we all know in Manhattan, couldn't
make it at that time, and there was a very small restaurant on Bleaker
Street, Bleaker and McDougall in the village that was for sale, and I
came home to my father. My father was a lawyer. His dream for
me was to after my undergrad degree, to obviously get my law degree and
work with him. I'm an only child, and that was his vision in
his dream. But I knew that, and I felt inside me that that
wasn't my calling and I wanted to focus on representing Sicily. I still didn't
exactly know how, but when September eleventh happened and the possibility to open a
restaurant, it seemed like a joke almost in my home, but I announced
that I'm going to open a restaurant on Bleaker Street, and that's how I
got involved in the restaurant business. With this opportunity to open very small restaurant
where I cooked dishes that I had grown up with, it was like a
laboratory for me, a place that I could experiment every thing I had studied
and show people that Sicily and Sicilian food is not spaghetti and meatballs, is
not a scene from the Godfather film. It's with no disrespect to a film
that's artistically beautiful and well made, but that's not what Sicily is. So
I felt that that was my calling to change that stereotype, and in my
small part, I think I contributed to that. After the first restaurant,
the least had finished there and I decided to start my post graduate studies.
At the same time, though, I was so driven to still be in
the restaurant business because I loved so much this idea of representing Sicily, and
also I enjoyed the interaction with fellow New Yorkers and creating relationships with people in
the neighborhood and sharing the dishes with them and my stories about Sicily. For
me, everything is about telling the stories and explaining the sensations and the emotions
of Sicily. So time will take Viously, I opened up a second restaurant,
Aolo, which was in Chelsea on the seventh Avenue in twenty first Street,
and then after that a third restaurant called Pastai on ninth Avenue. What
was the name of the first restaurant, Melissa. The first restaurant was called
Ostidia that Gallonado. There was a whole story behind the black Rooster, which
technically is associated with Tuscany, but it was a story that led back to
my childhood in Sicily, and I cooked the dishes that I had grown up
with basically, but it wasn't enough because I knew that in order to represent
Sicily, I needed to keep studying, keep researching, and really turned back
to the academic world and also a world where I could represent a background and
the ammunition to be able to represent Sicily in terms of writing in a way
that was more writing for a public audience. So that's where I studied at
the Columbia University Journalism School. You know, I of the fact that you
have approached your life and your life calling through family, heritage, cultural anthropology
and writing all connected through food. You know, it's interesting your life could
be a movie. There are a lot of movies that have been filmed in
Sicily, and what you said that kind of was interesting to me is growing
up the image of Sicily was not always positive. You know, The Godfather
wonderful movie, but you know it's about the mafia, and you know,
Sicily was portrayed is poor, corrupt, beautiful, but there were problems and
unfortunately it also translated to other aspects of business there. Obviously, the mafia,
as I learned because we went to the No Mafia Museum in Palermo,
did have a ironclad control over Sicily. Until finally it was driven out.
It's sadly somewhere else, but and a lot of it. I also learned
they have these wineries that were we captured and reclassified that were formerly owned by
the money. Was a huge amount of change that happened Sicily during this time,
and during your research also underwent a bit of a revolution in terms of
coming to Reckoning with itself as a place to visit and its industry in the
wine industry for sure, in the tourism and others. A lot of things
changed to help change that image. And thankfully more and positive things are being
shown and written about Sicily, and the movies are great, and everybody's saying
Indiana Jones. And as you did your regent, what did you learn that
changed about Sicily? What stay the same, but also what changed for the
good? Well, I remember we could just go back a little bit too.
When I had the second restaurant, I opened up the restaurants saying it's
a Sicilian restaurant with classic Sicilian dishes and the wine list that was only exclusively
Sicilian. And now we're talking about twenty twenty eleven, and at the time
I would say about half of the people that came would get up from the
table, go to the near by liquor store and purchase a bottle of Chianti
or Brunello or a wine that was non Sicilian and come back to pay the
corkage fee because they were so uninterested, you know what I mean. It
was amazing, and I was very discouraged initially because I said, I want
to only represent Sicily and here people don't even want to try the Sicilian wines.
Then after the first few years, there was this major shift because all
of a sudden, Sicilian wines became the wines to try. The media was
full of talking about Sicilian wines, especially with giving a focus to Etna,
and all of a sudden things changed and people would come and search out the
restaurant just because I had the Sicilian wine list. And I found that very
interesting because it really is something that reflects also the tourism of today. It's
the recreating of what Sicily is. And like you said, there's the show
that the White Lotus that's contributed to a lot of tourism. It's the way
that it's now being represented, and it's completely different than what I had studied
and what I had put together from the past decade of what of how Sicily
was represented. So I think that today there's such a major fluctuation of tourism
to the islands and everyone wanting to come here. However, it's the coastal
areas that get the tourism. Where we live is in the center of the
island, where our farm is, where in the mountains of the center of
Sicily, and it's absolutely an area where tourists don't come, but you do
see people come that want to explore, that want to really get to know
what the old Sicily was and is today. Well, I've actually spent more
time in the center of Sicily than in the coast because I'm blessed to go
on wine trips that have taken me there. You met your husband, you
were buying his wine, right. What happened was I was researching for my
book and I wanted to visit wineries in different areas. For example, I
didn't know that Sicily has nine provinces. I knew my area of Sicily.
I had, of course done so much research, but I really needed to
get to know firsthand all the different areas in order to be able to represent
it in a book form. Because it's Ali said to me, can you
write an encyclopedia about a Sicilian cuisine, to which I answered no, because
encyclopedia would take a hundred volumes and multiple lifetimes. But I can write a
good summary of of what it is. But in order to do that,
I realized that I needed to really travel, and with the restaurants, it
wasn't easy, but every two months I would leave and come to Sicily for
ten days and do very intense research trips. So if I would go to
an area that I didn't know where the best honeymaker was or where the cheese
was made, I would stop first at the different wineries. So I visited
so many wineries, of which I had the wines at my restaurant with failed
in Montoni. I was introduced to the wines. The first time I tried
Ruga and Nero Davola was through master of wine Bill Nesto and his wife Francis
di Savino, who wrote the World of Sicilian Wine, And as they were
releasing the book, they came to eat at my restaurant and brought me a
bottle, and they were enjoying a bottle of the wine at their table and
had me taste it with them, and I remember feeling that it was so
different, this freshness. It didn't feel like a Sicilian wine. So I
was very struck by it, and I had to come to Montoni. I
knew that sooner or later that was part of my agenda for my research for
the book. And my husband, of course at the time, wasn't my
husband. He kept saying no, because when the importer at the time would
say there's someone writing a book, he would say, well, I don't
you know, I really don't have time because he's very hands on on the
farm, on the vineyards. And for about two years that meeting never happened,
and I didn't know he was saying no. I didn't even though he
was didn't know he was here. I just knew it was failed to Montoni
that I was visiting. And that day, of course changed my life because
my first moment of meeting him was also my first moment of meeting failed to
Montoni and meeting the land of failed to Montoni, where I felt that I
just couldn't leave and I fell in love with him, which took time of
the two of us getting to know each other. It was love at first
sight, but it was getting to know each other over a long period of
time, especially from a distance, but Montoni was That feeling of seeing Montoni
could never never leave my heart. And I remember one day he said to
me, after about a year and a half of us knowing each other through
telephone calls and through multiple visits for the book, he said to me,
if you really want to visit for the harvest? Because I expressed a desire
to come to visit for the harvest, He said, the only way to
understand what that even means is to spend three hundred and sixty five days a
year and to live every day on the farm and to understand the culmination which
is this harvest. And of course it was a love proposal on his end,
but it was so true because every day counts into what goes into the
great harvest, the wines being made, and to this sale of the wines
that we craft here. So I'm glad I took him up on his offer.
And how long ago was that, Melissa, It was about a decade
ago, nearly close to a decade ago at this point now, and Vintoni
one of the most ancient wineries in Sicily. You're talking about quite old,
dating to fourteen sixty nine. So we're in it. And the property is
an estate, a beautiful estate that you've lovingly kept renovating. It's an ongoing
love of renovation. As we saw way there. How did Fabio's family they
come to own Fyoda Montani, Well, Mike, you said, the wideries
founded in fourteen sixty nine, and it was founded by a noble family of
at the time in Sicily was under Aragonese rule. It passed hands many times,
always within the aristocratic realm, and the owner prior to Fabio's grandfather was
a baron who was the Cardinal of Catania. He also owns lands on Edna
and around this in around Syracuse, Syracusa, Syracuse, and he sold the
property to my husband's grandfather in the late eighteen hundreds. Basically at the time,
this was right after unification of Italy, and there was a major decadence
and fall of the aristocratic class and the rise of the bourgeois class, of
the working class of of of Sicily. So it was possible at that time
for and what happened often was large fail those which are failed. Me is
comes from the word feudalism, so basically of the basically where large expanses of
land where we're under control, under the control of one owner, he became
he became the owner of the land and basically that he passed that into the
hands of my father in law. And then now the third generation is Scabule
and this is a The wines are extraordinary, and I'm going to underscore that
you do not tasted a lot of Sicilian wines, and universally everybody goes wow
because there is such a sense of place. And when you're sipping the wines
of Fyoto Montoni, you're sipping a sense of place. But that also goes
to everything there. Because we had punch with you as the food was this
amazing Sicilian lunch, I'm still thinking about it because I'm craving the foods of
Sicily right now and wines, which once I said before we started going on
air, we're kind of in a food desert here when it comes to certain
types of food where we're living temporarily right now. What percentage of your working
farm is dedicated to your vineyards, but also what else do you cultivate?
Because you are a full working farm and it is all hands on, it's
all very hands on here on the farm. A third of the land is
dedicated to the vineyard, so you can imagine it like the vineyard in the
center, and then it's surrounded by a ring that is grain fields that we
rotate with legum, fields like lentils and like chickpeas. All the grains we
only grow heritage grains. I should also say that we're very rigorously an organic
farm, so that is very influential on our decisions of what we grow,
how we and how we grow them. So hence the heritage grange, which
would do very well in organic. We also cultivate tomatoes and with the grain
we make pasta. We also have olive groves. So I could go on
and on. There's many different realities here on the farm, but yet everything
is run by Fabio and I with a lot of love and a lot of
time and all of our all of our energy put into it. How do
you debate up your responsibilities because you're also you also are parents to two young
children. Yes, we're parents to Elio and Francesco, who are three years
old and one year old respectively. Through not even three Elio and they just
thrive on the farm. You can imagine we have a beach home and we
could be at the beach every day day. And of course Fabio and I
want to be Fabio and I want to be on the farm and we want
to check the Viindia to day and check the fields and be a part of
it actively. And we don't want to we don't want to manage it from
afar. That's not what we what we intend to do. But you could
see even in Elio, who is so young, but he loves it.
He doesn't care about being at the beach. He wants to be in the
land and on the farm and with his little hole in the vineyard. Or
today he helped us, be helped in what he could do, but he
helped us with loading a container of wine that was leaving for New York.
And it's just beautiful to see his being so active and excited about being part
of the farm. Well, I want to touch on the wine and the
food. I'm going to start with the wine because I actually your wines are
widely available in the United States and we taste it through many and you have
I mean, what's interesting is there are vines that are pre philox era.
I mean, you know, very old vine vines. For someone who listeners
who may be somewhat familiar with Sicilia wines, let's talk about a few of
the wines. Most because Wilson Daniels is your importer and I'm on the site,
are available here. But let's talk about some given your location in Sicily,
what some of the wines are that set you feel set Fioda Montoni apart.
Obviously, I referenced the prefiloxera vine, the Kara bukara, which is
one sure, sure, sure, the prefiloxa are vines are. It's very
interesting because these are vines that were on the property when when Fabio's grandfather purchased
the land in the end of the eighteen hundreds, So they are very old
vines that still produce and actually produce a fair amount of grapes. They're nettle
dabola grapes, and we have some pre filoxor vines. Of all of the
different types of grapes that we grow on the property, the only one that
we have an abundance of, or to two hectares of that we can bottle
is the needle doabola. But there's also catato and in zeolia and petty corne
and Nedelo mascalais interestingly enough, Yeah, the Nedelo mascalaise, because of course
it's it's associated with Etna. But those vines were brought here when the Cardinal
of Catania who owns the lands, the prior owner, when he owned the
lands on Etna, he had an agronomist who worked for him, and the
agronomist father was also a priest, father Nellia, which interest interestingly means fog
in Italian. He would go back and forth with vines from here, which
the needle dobla is known as calabreze, and he would bring those calabreze vines
to the Etna and the Sidacus area, and he brought Neda lo mascalze here.
Interesting, and today we produced wines that are from vines that were grafted
off the prefiloxeta, the prefiloxead Lomascalze and vines. It's very unusual and it
has a different expression here than it doesn't Na. But it has maybe a
little less austere, a little more floral notes. You can feel it's Neda
lomascaleze, and you can see in the color and in the and in the
the body and the style of the wine but it's but definitely has some notes
that that distinguish it from being a ned lomascalz from Edna. And we we
finally started bottling that wine because my husband was a little bit he wasn't so
sure about doing so. He didn't want to be in competition with with Edna.
But it was the wine that his father always be nified and loved to
drink. He said, my father in law would say, I love it
because it's a wine that doesn't stain the glass. And now fifty years later,
we're making that wine that doesn't stain the glass. And we called it
Terra di Elio, which means the Lands of Elio, which was my father
in law's name, but it's also our first son's name. And the first
vintage we've we've unified that we commercialize, I should say, because every year
we always made a little of it, but the first vintage that we made
enough of to bottle and commercialize was the twenty twenty when Elio was born.
Well, I remember sitting outside we started our day just to paint a picture,
or sitting out on your patio till it started to rain, and I
remember having the the di Nerello masculizi rose diadel Sicilian. We had that beautiful
rose and we tasted some whites before we went inside, and you're it is
like a farmhouse inside, and you prepared this incredible meal. And when we
were there, it was I think may so spring and spring season. Yes,
for those who are, you know, less familiar with some of the
and as you said, a long time ago, no one seemed to know
the foods of Sicily. We are now talking and it's early. It's August
September area, and harvest is starting, and eggplant season is upon us and
tomatoes are being made into pulp. What are some dishes, foods and dishes
that you feel are essential to Sicily that everyone should think about whether they're visiting
or are featured in your book, because the book really takes you through Sicily,
but from where you are, well, I think that in terms of
what is traditional, it's it's a complicated question because when we look at the
island, there's so many different realities. We're here in the center, we're
in a mountainous air where where nearly eight hundred meters above sea level, and
everything that I grow here in my vegetable garden and everything just comes out so
so fresh and so flavorful because we have these we do have the hot Sicilian
sun, but we also have the nights that are very cool, so it's
very ideal for growing all year round for the for the vegetable garden. And
what I what I feel is that in other areas it's different. For example,
in the southeastern coast, I look more at the tomatoes and things that
are more intensely, very concentrated in flavor. In this area, I like
the the things that are more green, for example. Also the wild vegetables
and the wild herbs are very interesting, which grows all throughout Sicily, but
here in this in this mountainous area, it's quite abundant. So my cuisine
very much reflects this center area of Sicily, not only in terms of the
vegetables and the produce that's available, but this is an area that's very rich
with and full of full of animals for cheesemaking, because it's where one of
the only vineyards, the only the closest vineyard is Regaliali, which is about
twenty eight to thirty kilometers distance from us, but in this area it's mainly
grain field. This was the classic grainary of the Roman Empire, the center
of Sicily, and so we're full of sheep and goats and also cows,
and the cheesemaking is just amazing. So when I look at ingredients to cope
with, I have this fresh produce, like you said, eggplants right now,
or the the Sicilian zucchini, the long zucchini squash, the leaves of
the zucchini plant called tenetumi. Basically whatever is fresh and growing. But also
I like to use the elements, the traditional elements from the the animals of
the of the territory produce and the recipes I've now pretty much followed very much
old recipes that are dying out and recipes that are hard, too hard to
even replicate anymore. And those are the ones that I love to I love
to make it home. But they're all driven by simple ingredients. We grow
chickpeas, lentils. Every year we've now we're now harvesting fair amount. Just
last week we harvested and it was quite abundant. And it's interesting because every
year they taste different. There's really a vintage of the taste of the beans,
and interesting if you taste one next to each other you're you, you'd
you'd understand what I mean, because every year the climate is different, the
land is different, and that's reflected in the taste of the foods. So
what is Sicilian cuisine? We would be talking for hours about the history of
Sicily, about the culture of each different area, the geography of the different
area, and then of the different social classes, because there's so much mixed
within Sicily, from the peasant cuisine to the aristocratic cuisine. And how interestingly
enough, the peasant cuisine very much often reflects dishes that come from the aristocratic
cuisine. For example, there's a dish that's called a becafico, which basically
means sardines cooked in the way of the little birds that are called becafico.
The aristocratic recipe was that they were little birds. They were not sardines.
There were little birds that were stuffed and and stuffed with breadcrumbs and pine nuts
and raisins and cheese and then roasted. The peasant version was to take what
was abundant. If you put a net in the sea, especially in the
springtime, you'll be you'll fill up that net easily with sardines. So that
abundance was then translated into a copying of a dish that was part of part
of an aristocratic cuisine. And there's just so many of those type of examples.
There's another examples with caponata. Caponata comes from the word capone, is
the name of a fish similar to a small like a machi machi in terms
of the flesh, and kaponata was first made with that fish, not rede
with eggplants. But today it's known if you say caponata, everyone knows what
that means egg plants, right, But that's not the origin of the dish.
That's interesting. And it looks sounds like capon which is a rooster to
us. Yeah, but it's capona from Pesha. Capona the roosters is a
different word in Italian. It's interesting when I think of recent visits to Sicily
and also to the southern parts of Italy. I've got eggplant, and I
grew up I hated egg plant as a child, hated it, but I
actually love it after going to Italy and specifically to Sicily and to Campania,
which I think I had some of the best eggplant dishes of my life.
Sure, sure, yeah, And yet a lot of people are toil dated
to use egg plant cook with eggplant the United States. I feel that a
home cook in Sicily probably knows about this is something I've said often, But
at least you need to know a hundred ways of how to cook with with
egg plant as a in a Sicilian home because right now, I mean,
as we speak, this morning I picked I can't tell you how many egg
plants, and there's more tomorrow to pick, and more than the next day,
and every day it can't be done in the same recipe. But tonight
I'm roasting them in the oven very simply, just very very small. I
harvest them when they're really small, cut them in half, and then cut
little inserts into them, and put pieces of garlic, pieces of raw garlic,
some mint, some very age cheese, very harsh age spicy age cheese,
and lots of olive oil and parsley as well along with the mint,
and then just just roast them in the oven. And they're just fabulous.
So that that's tonight's dinner. We'll have to see for tomorrow. I was
thinking of making an egg clint parmigiana, which the classic recipe here is just
slicing them with skin off in this case, slicing them, frying them and
then topping them with some of tomato sauce, of course, homemade tomato sauce,
a basic leaf and then just a sprinkle of age cheese on top.
But why would you have with that, Melissa, Oh, let's see with
that, I probably have our netro double lan usa, which is which comes
from vines that are thirty five year old vines that were drafted from the prefiloxeta,
the mother plants. It's not a while, it's not a dish to
pair with the frucata because the prefiloxida nero doubla, which needs something more more
hefty and more something meaty, usually making the lamb or the roasted goat.
When we have the frucata the the We also produce a wine called petty Cone,
which is quite which has it's fuller and more spicy, and that that
I usually pair when I when I make our homemade sausage, which I make
nice full of pepper and full of black pepper and wild fennel. When you
cook, do you think about obviously you cook for the season, do you
think about the wine or do you know when you think about the wine when
you're cooking, or does that I think we do. I'll give you an
example. We had a Russan. We had a Russan and refrigerator last night,
and I just all I could do was think about that wine, and
there was nothing in the refrigerator to eat that would satisfy what I wanted with
that wine. I ended up going out and picking up because we kind of
live in a food doesn't right now, I end up picking up this wonderful
tie curry and spicy, pepious salad because that's all I wanted with that wine.
And so often when we cook, I think about what the wine is
first versus what we have, although sometimes it's just what we happen to have
in the refrigerator, and how can we make it more creative and less every
day, because I think that's a challenge for a lot of people's, Like
you know, you have an abundance of eggplant, or abundance of beans,
or abundance of zucchini, how to make it different every day? But when
we cook, we think about the wine just because we're wine. No,
absolutely absolutely we do too, But I think that I think of it as
almost like an ingredient in the dish. So I'm cooking and then thinking pairing
to me is just basically adding another ingredient into the dish, if if if
that makes sense, And so probably I think about, you know what,
I'm cooking first, and then the wine comes from there. We also,
of course, we drink our We drink our own wines a lot also because
we always do different tastings and we have bottles open, so we're always tasting
our wines. But we also really love to taste wines from around the world,
so it's become a bit of a hobby of ours. And and what's
that also, Oh gosh, so much. I mean, we're Barolo,
we love and the Burgundy. It's everything is intriguing. German whites, Austrian
whites. We basically have a little bit of everything in our little wine cellar.
And when when we have a dish that's interesting, we figure out what
to open and what to pair with it. But there's a fun sure,
well yeah, because listen, dinner doesn't taste good with water. Let's be
real. I understand you have a vineyard project. So the vineyard at the
moment is forty four hectors and we just this year just planted the wild vines
for another eight hectors of vineyard. I think I think you might have when
yeah, when you came in May, you saw the baby vines. Right,
forty four hectors is fairly large. Just for everybody who doesn't know math,
that's about one hundred and eight acres. It's fairly large. I mean
taking into consideration that we're a family winery because we're basically a meat small small
the medium sized winery, but still completely family operated. And it's we have
the request for for the wines, and we realized that we needed to we
needed to expand just a little bit. So this year we added the eight
hectors. What we do here is that first we plant wild vines. So
in January we planted those those wild vines. Wild vines do not produce grapes,
so next week or not even this Saturday. So in two days from
now, a group of grafters and the average age is seventy eight years old.
Of the group of grafters who come, there's five of them. And
it's a it's very hard to find grafters nowadays because it's absolutely a dying art
because if you for for the most part, when someone wants to plant a
new vineyard, you go to the nursery garden, or you take the catalog
from a nursery garden and you pick out which, let's say, clone of
Neto daubla you'd like, you read the description, you'd like it to be
more disease resistant, or one that works better at a high altitude, or
one that has more taste of cherry, or so forth. Here Montoni,
the objective is to look at the past in order to make decisions for the
future. That's my husband's motto and that's become mine as well. And what
we very consciously decided was if we plant a new vineyard, and when we
do so, it has to be planted grafted from the old plants. That
means that we continue the genetic code of the old plants, which is a
genetic code that's unique to Montoni. Especially. There's there was there's been research
done on netodabola, which is quite interesting. There were thirty different specimens of
nedodaubola from around Sicily to can and within that thirty fifteen different clones were identified
and that was only thirty taken, so you can imagine if that was expanded.
So fifty percent is very very high percentage. And the clone that's here
at Montoni is of the Neddle dabola or of the Neddle mascalaise or so forth,
is what we want to carry forward genetically. So the only way to
do so, of course, is to not purchase fines from the nursery garden
and to graft onto the to the wild vines. So it's an amazing scene.
I'll send you pictures, Melanie from the over the next few days,
because the whole work job needs to be done within a ten to ten day
window. They will, the grafters will come, they'll take the pieces of
the of the old vines. And what's interesting is we're grafting a part of
the vineyard at the highest point. We're grafting from old vines that we are
researching right now. We don't even know the name of the old vines there.
There's some red and some white vines that we are not sure even what
they are old to to the land, and we're grafting from from them a
part of the of the vineyard. Well, you know, Melissa, I'm
on your website Fayota Montoni dot it and you have a wonderful video explanation of
this. I love it because it says, basically, as you said,
you can set up a vineyard with two roads to follow. You buy the
plants from the nursery or you propagate the ancient vines from your vineyards. And
that is like for someone who's not in the wine business doesn't understand that.
It's like if you had the mother of a very fine balsamic vinegar, when
to make a really fine balsamic vinegar, you'd have to start with the mother
and you have to propagate. And that's really what you're doing, is you're
propagating and keep and that is something very unique to Fayuta Montoni. I want
to underscore that like fifty times because it is it is labor intensive. I'm
kind of blown away that the grap that they're seventy eight years old and at
what happens when they die out. But basically you're taking, as you said,
the genetic code and that takes time. So when you're doing that,
now, when will you actually see vines producing fruit? Well from by next
year what comes up is the is what's been grafted on, so in terms
of variety, would be already the plant by next year, will that grows
will be the variety that we that we graphed onto the wild plant. By
the time we see fruit could be let's say the second year that it's planted.
But we cut off those those clusters, so will it will cut them
off in order to strengthen the roots of those vines. We'll do that for
a few years. So the first sign of of of grapes that we could
could look at will be about five years down the road. But it's it's
really for a long term project. It's a it's a vineer that we planted
so so that our sons can have can can can harvest the fruits as they
grow up. Because it's really, uh, it's a project that we look
at. It's a forty year project. It's not it's not something that you
look at for next year. We're already already making wine. I think it's
important score this is this is a labor of love. This is you know,
looking at the genetics of wine. And it is not like the wine
that are most people in the United States are seeing on shelves the supermarkets,
which is you know, like the equivalent of fast food wine. Half the
time. This is wine that is you know, they're slow cooking this is
slow cultivation and evolution of of of of vine and it's quite fascinating and like
a lot of people don't understand that, but this is how we do everything
on the farm. It's I know, of course you focus on focus on
the wine, but that's the heritage grains. We save our grain year the
year. That's that's a strain of grain that it is not found everywhere and
it's not a regular modern version genetically modified dorm wheat. The tomatoes that the
tomato plants I have the seeds that are from very old old versions. Even
the vinegar that I make that I use in my caponata has a mother mother
vinegar that came from my husband's great aunts, a great uncle's mother, so
it goes back over a century ago. That to us is the basis of
everything, and it's I don't know if the excitement comes through in my voice,
but I how I could express that. It's just the driving force between
of what we do, and it's what I could only have dreamed of doing
as a child, going back to when I was twelve years old cooking in
our home to fill fill the home with the scent of sicily. Today I'm
able to do that, and today I'm able to realize the realize those dreams
and it's just a true blessing. You really are living the agreement. David
and I were blessed because you sent us once this incredible care package with the
most amazing pasta and chick We still have some of those chickweys. We actually,
you know, we fight over when to use them because we keep we
want to hold on to everything and honeys and the brunt these pistache Sicilian pistachios
and honey and everything is just amazing. Can you do you? Can you
do? You sell your products? Is there a way for anyone in the
United States to get your food products? And you can get the wines,
but what about the food. Well, what we've done now is we've we've
sold on very smaller scale and to some of our partners around the world that
have organic shops or really focus on the organic, especially with our olive oil
or the lentils. But we have made the decision to also package and sell
on the more small scale some of our some of these products, like the
pastas, the tomato sauces. It's just that it's we don't want it to
take away from our focus on the wine because it's in order to make wine
that to make good wine, it really takes our dedication and being a family,
family operated business. It's those three hundred and sixty five daste a year
and are not going to the beaches and are not taking vacations, and it's
this. It's full time dedicated to that and to tasting all the tanks every
ten days, and to being a part in the of the seller operations day
today. So our other products are where I have a huge passion for them
and I put I put energy into them, but of course we don't want
them to take away from our main focus, which which is it's the wines,
and that's why I do small scale. So this year, in terms
of tomatoes, I have one hector of tomatoes planted. The lentils which are
easier to cultivate and easier to easier to manage on a large scale. We
seated the ten hectors more or less this year. But everything has to be
proportioned in order to keep wine our focus. You know, I'm going to
underscores. We start to wind down this wonderful conversation. This is a very
special place in the heart and soul and center of Italy, which I David
and I are blessed to have visited. Blest for those of you who do
decide to come to Italy, whether you visit Fayota Montoni or not, you
can get the wines in Italy and in the United States. But when you
travel, wherever you travel, go off the beaten track to the heart and
soul of a region. Don't just stay where all the tourists are on the
coast or in the big city exactly. You won't meet the real You'll you'll
see the soul, but you won't see the heart, and that, I
think is what is special about Fayota Montoni. There's a soul throughout Sicily,
but you're in the heart. You're in a It's a beating heart of what's
happening in a living, working farm and family. And I feel that's what
I felt when I was there. Well, your words are very, very
beautiful and very touching to me because it's exactly what I feel. But I'm
not always sure if everyone else feels the same. But the fact that you
felt that way when you came to came to Failda Montoni confirms how I feel
about living here. And about dedicating my life to this land, and it's
it's also a life that's dedicated not only to this land, but to this
beating heart of Sicily that really needs attention, it really needs to be not
forgotten, because if anything about about the work we do, it's about bringing
life to the territory and not letting it be abandoned because it could easily be
so, but that's not that's obviously not what our objective is. And I
hope that in my next book, which is basically it's basically all of my
field work. We could call it, but a collection of my diaries from
the past years, I hope that I can best represent what this beating heart
of the of the core of Sicily means, and not only what it means
to me, but how it's a reflection an example for the rest of the
world in today's modern world. Well, you're a beautiful writer. Again,
I just want to underscore that the book that is available right now is Sicily.
It's by Risoli, The Cookbook, and it is fabulous. I can't
wait to read your next one. I love the fact that you followed your
heart to the place you want to be, because that is what I'm all
about is helping people follow their heart and live the life they choose, and
I love the fact that you've done that. Thank you so much for joining
me. I'm getting hungry just thinking about everything. I can't wait to visit,
see you again, see you and Fabio and the family again. Until
then, I toast to everything you're doing. Thank you, Melanie, and
thank you for having me. And I warmly, warmly welcome you and David
Beck as soon as possible. This is your retreat and wherever whenever you want
to come stay for an extended period of time, You're more than welcome to
do so. Thank you. I appreciate it. And good luck with harvest
this year. All right, thank you, thank you. I'll keep you
posted definitely what some photograph says, we graft and as we harvest. All
right, thank you very much. Thank you. You stand up that box,
make you mine, and your stand up roster down, your stand u