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Speaker 3: Many of you follow my husband David Ransom and I
Speaker 3: as we travel throughout Sicily and Italy and Europe, and
Speaker 3: we love Sicily and this show is dedicated to Sicily
Speaker 3: because we can't get enough of it, and apparently America
Speaker 3: and cannot get enough of Sicily either, because there have
Speaker 3: been numerous shows about Sicily, White Lotus being the most
Speaker 3: recent that have attracted people to Sicily. But there is
Speaker 3: a lot of Sicily to discover and a lot of
Speaker 3: people just head straight to the coast. Well, my guest
Speaker 3: today is going to show you not only how beautiful
Speaker 3: Sicily is coast to coast, but where she lives is
Speaker 3: in the center the heart of Sicily and truly one
Speaker 3: of the most beautiful and pure areas I have visited.
Speaker 3: The winery is called Fayuda Montoni and Melissa Mueller is
Speaker 3: the co proprietor with her husband Fabio Suretchi. She is
Speaker 3: not only a co proprietor, but she had formerly owned
Speaker 3: a couple of restaurants dedicated to Sicilian food in New
Speaker 3: York and the author of a terrific book on Sicily
Speaker 3: called Sicil Recipes Rooted in Tradition. Having come to know
Speaker 3: Melissa and having visited theyd Montoni myself, we can share
Speaker 3: with you the fact that she is probably one of
Speaker 3: the most knowledgeable people on Sicilian food and culture today.
Speaker 3: And you are going to love this show because we're
Speaker 3: going to dive into and take you by the hand
Speaker 3: through the airwaves to Sicily so you can experience it
Speaker 3: and think about what you can do to enjoy Sicily
Speaker 3: in your home, but also plan a visit. Melissa. Welcome.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Melanie. It's such an honor to be on
Speaker 4: your show, and also I'm very touched and flattered by
Speaker 4: your lovely introduction.
Speaker 3: Well, you have an amazing background, so we always like
Speaker 3: to start with that you grew up in America, but
Speaker 3: you have Sicilian heritage, So talk about your childhood and
Speaker 3: your heritage and how you ended up finding that powerful
Speaker 3: reconnection back to your roots.
Speaker 4: Well, I must say that my whole life has revolved
Speaker 4: around either from living here now for the past ten years,
Speaker 4: or just when I was away or what I call
Speaker 4: in exile from Sicily and growing up in the New York,
Speaker 4: New Jersey area, where I basically dedicated everything in my
Speaker 4: life to the island of Sicily. From a very young age,
Speaker 4: I grew up coming every summer to my grandmother's village,
Speaker 4: which is in the province of Agrigento on the southern
Speaker 4: coast of Sicily, a small village called Santana, small in
Speaker 4: the sense there's about four hundred inhabitants. It's a direct
Speaker 4: contrast to Manhattan, where I grew up. Basically, the love
Speaker 4: of Sicily that I have comes from that young age,
Speaker 4: and as a child, I wanted to recreate in our
Speaker 4: home the perfumes and the smells and the sensations that
Speaker 4: I felt around Sicily. So I started cooking at a
Speaker 4: very young age, and my love of ingredients and recipes
Speaker 4: starts at that time. But Then as I grew up,
Speaker 4: I realized that I want to focus more on the
Speaker 4: culture and the food culture of Sicily, not just on
Speaker 4: ingredients and on cooking, but basically, what I felt was
Speaker 4: that food and Sicilian food was a means for me
Speaker 4: to understand the culture and the history of these people
Speaker 4: that I felt so connected with. So I started studying
Speaker 4: anthropology with a focus on Mediterranean food culture. And I
Speaker 4: say Mediterranean because I felt to understand Sicily, I needed
Speaker 4: to look at it in its broad context. So I
Speaker 4: studied all the various regions and history and culture surrounding Sicily,
Speaker 4: not only Sicily itself. The love of Sicily only kept growing.
Speaker 4: So when I finished my undergrad degree, before I moved
Speaker 4: on to my postgraduate degree, my goal was to somehow
Speaker 4: find a way to represent Sicily. I started writing, I
Speaker 4: started looking at different ways to do so. But September
Speaker 4: eleventh happened and I was torn. And so many restaurants,
Speaker 4: as we all know in Manhattan, couldn't make it at
Speaker 4: that time, and there was a very small restaurant on
Speaker 4: Bleeker Street, Bleeker and McDougall in the village that was
Speaker 4: for sale, and I came home to my father My
Speaker 4: father was a lawyer. His dream for me was to
Speaker 4: after my undergrad degree, to obviously get my law degree
Speaker 4: and work with him. I'm an only child, and that
Speaker 4: was his vision in his dream. But I knew that,
Speaker 4: and I felt inside me that that wasn't my calling
Speaker 4: and I wanted to focus on representing Sicily. I still
Speaker 4: didn't exactly know how, but when September eleventh happened and
Speaker 4: the possibility to open a restaurant, it seemed like a
Speaker 4: joke almost in my home, but I announced that I'm
Speaker 4: going to open a restaurant on Bleaker Street, and that's
Speaker 4: how I got involved in the restaurant business. With this
Speaker 4: opportunity to open very small restaurant where I cooked dishes
Speaker 4: that I had grown up with, it was like a
Speaker 4: laboratory for me, a place that I could experiment every
Speaker 4: thing I had studied and show people that Sicily and
Speaker 4: Sicilian food is not spaghetti and meatballs, is not a
Speaker 4: scene from the Godfather film. It's a with no disrespect
Speaker 4: to a film that's artistically beautiful and well made, but
Speaker 4: that's not what Sicily is. So I felt that that
Speaker 4: was my calling to change that stereotype, and in my
Speaker 4: small part I think I contributed to that. After the
Speaker 4: first restaurant, the lease had finished there and I decided
Speaker 4: to start my post graduate studies. At the same time, though,
Speaker 4: I was so driven to still be in the restaurant
Speaker 4: business because I loved so much this idea of representing Sicily,
Speaker 4: and also I enjoyed the interaction with fellow New Yorkers
Speaker 4: and creating relationships with people in the neighborhood and sharing
Speaker 4: the dishes with them and my stories about Sicily. For me,
Speaker 4: everything is about telling the stories and explaining the sensations
Speaker 4: and the emotions of Sicily. So time will take. I
Speaker 4: opened up a second restaurant, Aolo, which was in Chelsea
Speaker 4: on the seventh Avenue and twenty first Street, and then
Speaker 4: after that a third restaurant called Pastaill on ninth Avenue.
Speaker 3: What was the name of the first restaurant, signal Melissa.
Speaker 4: The first restaurant was called Ostidia that Galloneto. There was
Speaker 4: a whole story behind that, the black Rooster, which technically
Speaker 4: is associated with Tuscany, but it was a story that
Speaker 4: led back to my childhood in Sicily, and I cooked
Speaker 4: the dishes that I had grown up with basically, but
Speaker 4: it wasn't enough because I knew that in order to
Speaker 4: represent Sicily, I needed to keep studying, keep researching, and
Speaker 4: really turn back to the academic world and also a
Speaker 4: world where I could represent a background and the ammunition
Speaker 4: to be able to represent Sicily in terms of writing
Speaker 4: in a way that was more writing for a public audience.
Speaker 4: So that's where I studied at the Columbia University Journalism School.
Speaker 3: You know the fact that you have approached your life
Speaker 3: and your life calling through family, heritage, cultural anthropology and
Speaker 3: writing all connected through food. You know, it's interesting your
Speaker 3: life could be a movie. There are a lot of
Speaker 3: movies that have been filmed in Sicily, and what you
Speaker 3: said that kind of was interesting to me is growing up,
Speaker 3: the image of Sicily was not always positive. You know,
Speaker 3: The Godfather wonderful movie, but you know it's about the mafia,
Speaker 3: and you know, Sicily was portrayed as poor, corrupt, beautiful,
Speaker 3: but there were problems and unfortunately it also translated to
Speaker 3: other aspects of business there. Obviously, the mafia, as I
Speaker 3: learned because we went to the No Mafia Museum in Palermo,
Speaker 3: did have an ironclad control over Sicily until finally it
Speaker 3: was driven out it's sadly somewhere else, but and a
Speaker 3: lot of I also learned they have these wineries that
Speaker 3: were recaptured and reclassified that were formerly owned by the money.
Speaker 3: There was a huge amount of change that happened Sicily
Speaker 3: during this time, and during your research also underwent a
Speaker 3: bit of a revolution in terms of coming to Reckoning
Speaker 3: with itself as a place to visit and its industry
Speaker 3: in the wine industry for sure, in the tourism and others.
Speaker 3: A lot of things changed to help change that image.
Speaker 3: And thankfully more and positive things are being shown and
Speaker 3: written about Sicily, and the movies are great, and everybody's
Speaker 3: saying in Indiana Jones And as you did your reason,
Speaker 3: what did you learn that changed about Sicily? What stay
Speaker 3: the same, but also what changed for the good?
Speaker 4: Well, I remember we could just go back a little
Speaker 4: bit to when I had the second restaurant. I opened
Speaker 4: up the restaurant saying it's a Sicilian restaurant with classic
Speaker 4: Sicilian dishes and the wineless that was only exclusively Sicilian.
Speaker 4: And now we're talking about twenty ten, twenty eleven, and
Speaker 4: at the time I would say about half of the
Speaker 4: people that came would get up from the table, go
Speaker 4: to the near liquor store and purchase a bottle of
Speaker 4: Chianti or Brunello or a wine that was non Sicilian
Speaker 4: and come back to pay the corkage fee because they
Speaker 4: were so uninterested in what I mean. It was amazing,
Speaker 4: and I was very discouraged initially because I said, I
Speaker 4: want to only represent Sicily and here people don't even
Speaker 4: want to try the Sicilian wines. Then after the first
Speaker 4: few years, there was this major shift because all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, Sicilian wines became the wines to try. The
Speaker 4: media was full of talking about Sicilian wines, especially with
Speaker 4: giving a focus to Edna, and all of a sudden
Speaker 4: things changed and people would come and search out the
Speaker 4: restaurant just because I had the Sicilian wine list. And
Speaker 4: I found that very interesting because it really is something
Speaker 4: that reflects also the tourism of today. It's the re
Speaker 4: creating of what Sicily is. And like you said, there's
Speaker 4: the show that the White the White Lotus that's contributed
Speaker 4: to a lot of tourism. It's the way that it's
Speaker 4: now being represented, and it's completely different than the what
Speaker 4: I had studied and what I had put together from
Speaker 4: the past decade of of what houses to house, Sicily
Speaker 4: was represented. So I think that today there's such a
Speaker 4: major fluctuation of tourism to the islands and everyone wanting
Speaker 4: to come here. However, it's the coastal areas that get
Speaker 4: the tourism. Where we live is in the center of
Speaker 4: the island, where our farm is, where in the mountains
Speaker 4: of the center of Sicily, and it's absolutely an area
Speaker 4: where tourists don't come, but you do see people come
Speaker 4: that want to explore, that want to really get to
Speaker 4: know what the old Sicily was and is today.
Speaker 3: Well, I've actually spent more time in the center of
Speaker 3: Sicily than in the coasts because I'm blessed to go
Speaker 3: on wine trips that have taken me there. You met
Speaker 3: your husband, you were buying his wine, right.
Speaker 4: What happened was I was researching for my book and
Speaker 4: I wanted to visit wineries in different areas. For example,
Speaker 4: I didn't know that Sicily has nine provinces. I knew
Speaker 4: my area of Sicily. I had, of course done so
Speaker 4: much research, but I really needed to get to know
Speaker 4: first hand all the different areas in order to be
Speaker 4: able to represent it in a book form. Because Rizzoli
Speaker 4: said to me, can you write an encyclopedia about Sicilian cuisine,
Speaker 4: to which I answered no, because an encyclopedia would take
Speaker 4: one hundred volumes and multiple lifetimes. But I can write
Speaker 4: a good summary of what it is. But in order
Speaker 4: to do that, I realized that I needed to really travel,
Speaker 4: and with the restaurants, it wasn't easy, but every two
Speaker 4: months I would leave and come to Sicily for ten
Speaker 4: days and do very intense research trips. So if I
Speaker 4: would go to an area that I didn't know where
Speaker 4: the best honeymaker was or where the cheese was made,
Speaker 4: I would stop first at the different wineries. So I
Speaker 4: visited so many wineries, of which I had the wines
Speaker 4: at my restaurant with failed in Montoni. I was introduced
Speaker 4: to the wines. The first time I tried the Rucara
Speaker 4: and Nero Davola was through master of wine Bill Nesto
Speaker 4: and his wife Francis di Savino, who wrote the World
Speaker 4: of Sicilian Wine, And as they were releasing the book,
Speaker 4: they came to eat at my restaurant and brought me
Speaker 4: a bottle, and they were enjoying a bottle of the
Speaker 4: wine at their table and had me taste it with them,
Speaker 4: and I remember feeling that it was so different, this freshness.
Speaker 4: It didn't feel like a Sicilian wine. So I was
Speaker 4: very struck by it, and I had to come to Montoni.
Speaker 4: I knew that sooner or later that was part of
Speaker 4: my agenda for my research for the book. And my husband,
Speaker 4: of course at the time, wasn't my husband. He kept
Speaker 4: saying no, because when the importer at the time would
Speaker 4: say there's someone writing a book, he would say, well,
Speaker 4: I don't you know, I really don't have time because
Speaker 4: he's very hands on on the farm in the vineyards.
Speaker 4: And for about two years that meeting never happened, and
Speaker 4: I didn't know he was saying no. I didn't even
Speaker 4: know he was the didn't know he was here. I
Speaker 4: just knew it was failed to Montoni that I was visiting.
Speaker 4: And that day, of course changed my life because my
Speaker 4: first moment of meeting him was also my first moment
Speaker 4: of meeting failed to Montoni and meeting the land of
Speaker 4: failed to Montoni, where I felt that I just couldn't
Speaker 4: leave and I fell in love with him, which took
Speaker 4: time of the two of us getting to know each other.
Speaker 4: It was love at first sight that it was getting
Speaker 4: to know each other over a long period of time,
Speaker 4: especially from a distance, but Montoni was That feeling of
Speaker 4: seeing Montoni could never never leave my heart. And I
Speaker 4: remember one day he said to me, after about a
Speaker 4: year and a half of us knowing each other through
Speaker 4: telephone calls and through multiple visits for the book, he
Speaker 4: said to me, if you really want to visit for
Speaker 4: the harvest? Because I expressed a desire to come to
Speaker 4: visit for the harvest, He said, the only way to
Speaker 4: understand what that even means is to spend three hundred
Speaker 4: and sixty five days a year and to live every
Speaker 4: day on the farm and to understand the culmination which
Speaker 4: is this harvest. And of course it was a love
Speaker 4: proposal on his end, but it was so true because
Speaker 4: every day counts into what goes into the great harvest,
Speaker 4: the wines being made, and to this sale of the
Speaker 4: wines that we craft here. So I'm glad I took
Speaker 4: him up on his offer.
Speaker 3: And how long ago was that, Melissa.
Speaker 4: It was about a decade ago, nearly close to a
Speaker 4: decade ago at this point now.
Speaker 3: And the pun Tooni is like one of the most
Speaker 3: ancient wineries in Sicily. You're talking about quite old, dating
Speaker 3: to fourteen sixty nine, so we're in it. And the
Speaker 3: property is an estate, a beautiful estate that you've lovingly
Speaker 3: kept renovated or it's an ongoing love of renovation, as
Speaker 3: we saw them move there. How did Babia's found they
Speaker 3: come to own Fyoda Montani.
Speaker 4: Well, like you said, the wideries founded in fourteen sixty nine,
Speaker 4: and it was founded by a noble family. At the time,
Speaker 4: Sicily was under Aragonese rule. It passed hands many times,
Speaker 4: always within the aristocratic realm, and the owner prior to
Speaker 4: Fabio's grandfather was a baron who was the Cardinal of Catania.
Speaker 4: He also owned lands on Edna and around around Syracuse,
Speaker 4: Syracusa Syracuse, and he sold the property to my husband's
Speaker 4: grandfather in the late eighteen hundreds. Basically at the time,
Speaker 4: this was right after unification of Italy, and there was
Speaker 4: a major decadence and fall of the aristocratic class and
Speaker 4: the rise of the bourgeois class of the working class
Speaker 4: of of of Sicily. So it was possible at that
Speaker 4: time for and what happened often was large faiotos, which
Speaker 4: are failed me comes from the word feudalism. So basically
Speaker 4: of the basically where large expanses of land we were
Speaker 4: under control, under the control of one owner, he became
Speaker 4: he became the owner of the land and basically then
Speaker 4: he passed that into the hands of my father in law.
Speaker 4: And then now the third generation is is Godvil.
Speaker 3: And this is uh. The wines are extraordinary, and I'm
Speaker 3: going to underscore that. You do not tasted a lot
Speaker 3: of Sicilian wines, and universally everybody goes wow because there
Speaker 3: is such a sense of place. And when you're sipping
Speaker 3: the wines of Foto Montoni, you're sipping a sense of place.
Speaker 3: But that also goes to everything there. Because we had
Speaker 3: lunch with you as the food was you did this
Speaker 3: amazing Sicilian lunch. I'm still thinking about it because I'm
Speaker 3: craving the foods of Sicily right now on wines, which
Speaker 3: once I said before we started going on air, we're
Speaker 3: kind of in a food desert here when it comes
Speaker 3: to certain types of food where we're living temporarily right now.
Speaker 3: What percentage of your working farm is dedicated to your vineyards,
Speaker 3: but also what else do you cultivate? Because you are
Speaker 3: a full working farm and it is all hands on.
Speaker 4: It's all very hands on here on the farm. A
Speaker 4: third of the land is dedicated to the vineyard, so
Speaker 4: you can imagine it like the vineyard in the center,
Speaker 4: and then it's surrounded by a ring that is grain
Speaker 4: fields that we rotate with lagoon fields like lentils and
Speaker 4: like chickpeas. All the grains we only grow heritage grains.
Speaker 4: I should also say that we're very rigorously an organic farm,
Speaker 4: so that is very influential on our decisions of what
Speaker 4: we grow, how and how we grow them. So hence
Speaker 4: the heritage grange, which which do very well in organic.
Speaker 4: We also cultivate tomatoes and with the grain we make pasta.
Speaker 4: We also have olive groves. So I could go on
Speaker 4: and on. There's many different realities here on the farm,
Speaker 4: but yet everything is run by Fabio and I with
Speaker 4: a lot of love and a lot of time and
Speaker 4: all of our energy put into it.
Speaker 3: How do you dividing up your recession's abilities because you're
Speaker 3: also you also are parents to two young children.
Speaker 4: Yes, we're parents to Ellio and Francesco, who are three
Speaker 4: years old and one year old respectively. Through not even
Speaker 4: three Elio and they just thrive on the farm. You
Speaker 4: can imagine we have a beach home and we could
Speaker 4: be at the beach every day. And of course Fabio
Speaker 4: and I want to be on Fabio and I want
Speaker 4: to be on the farm, and we want to check
Speaker 4: the vindear to day and check the fields and be
Speaker 4: a part of it actively. And we don't want to
Speaker 4: we don't want to manage it from afar. That's not
Speaker 4: what we what we intend to do. But you could
Speaker 4: see even in Elio, who is so young, but he
Speaker 4: loves it. He doesn't care about being at the beach.
Speaker 4: He wants to be in the land and on the
Speaker 4: farm and with his little hoe in the vineyard. Or
Speaker 4: today he helped us, be helped in what he could do,
Speaker 4: but he helped us with loading a container of wine
Speaker 4: that was leaving for New York. And it's just beautiful
Speaker 4: to see his being so active and excited about being
Speaker 4: part of the farm.
Speaker 3: Well, I want to touch on the wine and the food.
Speaker 3: I'm going to start with the wine because I actually
Speaker 3: your wines are widely available in the United States and
Speaker 3: we taste it through many and you have I mean,
Speaker 3: what's interesting is there are vines that are pre phyloccera.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, very old vine wines. For someone
Speaker 3: who listeners who may be somewhat familiar with Sicilia wines,
Speaker 3: let's talk about a few of the wines. Most, because
Speaker 3: Wilson Daniels is your importer and I'm on the site,
Speaker 3: are available here. But let's talk about some given your
Speaker 3: location in Sicily. But some of the wines are that
Speaker 3: set you feel set feud to Montonia part Obviously, I
Speaker 3: reference the prefiloza vine, the Vercora Brucaro, which is.
Speaker 4: One sure, so the Prefiloxa vines are. It's very interesting
Speaker 4: because these are vines that were on the property when
Speaker 4: my when Fabio's grandfather purchased the land in the end
Speaker 4: of the eighteen hundreds, so they are very old vines
Speaker 4: that still produce and actually produce a fair amount of grapes.
Speaker 4: There Netto Davola grapes and we have some pre Philoxa vines.
Speaker 4: Of all of the different types of grapes that we
Speaker 4: grow on the property, the only one that we have
Speaker 4: an abundance of or two hectores of that we can
Speaker 4: bottle is the Neto davola.
Speaker 5: But there's also cateralto and in Zolia and Petticne and
Speaker 5: Nello Mascales interestingly enoughales because.
Speaker 4: Of course it's it's associated with Etna. Correct, But those
Speaker 4: vines were brought here when the Cardinal of Catania who
Speaker 4: owned the lands, the prior owner, when he owned the
Speaker 4: lands on Itna, he had an agronomist who worked for him,
Speaker 4: and the agronomist was also a priest father Nellia, which
Speaker 4: interestingly means fog in Italian. He would go back and
Speaker 4: forth with vines from here, which the nea is known
Speaker 4: as calabrese, and he would bring those Calabrese vines to
Speaker 4: the Edna and then Siracus area, and he brought ned
Speaker 4: alo mascales here. Interesting, and today we produce wines that
Speaker 4: are from vines that were grafted off the Prefiloxada, the
Speaker 4: Prefiloxa nedal mascales and vines. It's very unusual and it
Speaker 4: has a different expression here than it doesn't, but it
Speaker 4: has maybe a little less austere, a little more floral notes.
Speaker 4: You can feel it's ned aalo mascales. You can see
Speaker 4: it in the color and in the and in the
Speaker 4: the body and the style of the wine. But it's
Speaker 4: but definitely has some notes that that distinguish it from
Speaker 4: being a ned Ala Mascaleese from Edna. And we we
Speaker 4: finally started bottling that that wine because my husband was
Speaker 4: a little bit he wasn't so sure about doing so.
Speaker 4: He didn't want to be in competition with with Thattna.
Speaker 4: But it was the wine that his father always unified
Speaker 4: and loved to drink. He said, my father in law
Speaker 4: would say, I love it because it's a wine that
Speaker 4: doesn't stain the glass. And now fifty years later, we're
Speaker 4: making that wine that doesn't stain the glass. And we
Speaker 4: called it Terre di Elio, which means the lands of Elio,
Speaker 4: which was my father in law's name, but it's also
Speaker 4: our first son's name. And the first vintage we've unified
Speaker 4: that we commercialized, I should say, because every year we
Speaker 4: always made a little of it, but the first vintage
Speaker 4: that we made enough of to bottle and commercialize was
Speaker 4: the twenty twenty when Elio was born.
Speaker 3: Well, I remember sitting outside. We started our day just
Speaker 3: to paint a picture, sitting out on your patio till
Speaker 3: it started to rain, and I remember having the Nairello
Speaker 3: moscal ezi rose d'adell sicilian. We had that beautiful rose,
Speaker 3: and we tasted some whites before we went inside, and
Speaker 3: it is like a farmhouse inside, and you prepared this
Speaker 3: incredible meal, and when we were there, it was I
Speaker 3: think May spring and spring season. Yes, for those who are,
Speaker 3: you know, less familiar with some of the and as
Speaker 3: you said, a long time ago, no one seemed to
Speaker 3: know the foods of Sicily. We are now talking in
Speaker 3: it's early it's August September area, and harvest is starting,
Speaker 3: and eggplant season is upon us and tomatoes are being
Speaker 3: made into pulp.
Speaker 4: What are some.
Speaker 3: Dishes, foods and dishes that you feel are essential to
Speaker 3: Sicily that everyone should think about whether they're visiting or
Speaker 3: are featured in your book, because the book really takes
Speaker 3: you through Sicily, but from where you are, well, I.
Speaker 4: Think that in terms of what is traditional, it's a
Speaker 4: complicated question because when we look at the island, there's
Speaker 4: so many different realities. We're here in the center where
Speaker 4: a mountainous air where nearly eight hundred meters above sea level,
Speaker 4: and everything that I grow here in my vegetable garden,
Speaker 4: and everything just comes out so fresh and so flavorful
Speaker 4: because we have these we do have the hot Sicilian sun,
Speaker 4: but we also have the nights that are very cool,
Speaker 4: so it's very ideal for growing all year round for
Speaker 4: the for the vegetable garden. And what I feel is
Speaker 4: that in other areas it's different. For example, in the
Speaker 4: southeastern coast, I look more at the tomatoes and things
Speaker 4: that are more intensely, very concentrated in flavor. In this area,
Speaker 4: I like the the things that are more green, for example.
Speaker 4: Also the wild vegetables and the wild herbs are very interesting,
Speaker 4: which grow all throughout Sicily, but here in this mountainous
Speaker 4: area it's quite abundant. So my cuisine very much reflects
Speaker 4: this center area of Sicily, not only in terms of
Speaker 4: the vegetables and the produce that's available, but this is
Speaker 4: an area that's very rich and full of full of
Speaker 4: animals for cheesemaking, because it's one of the only vineyards.
Speaker 4: Only the closest vineyard is Regalliali, which is about twenty
Speaker 4: eight to thirty kilometers distance from us. But in this
Speaker 4: area it's mainly grain field. This was the classic grainary
Speaker 4: of the Roman Empire center of Sicily, and so we're
Speaker 4: full of sheep and goats and also cows and the
Speaker 4: cheesemaking is just amazing. So when I look at ingredients
Speaker 4: to cook with, I have this fresh produce, like you said,
Speaker 4: egg plants right now, or the Sicilian zucchini, the long
Speaker 4: zucchini squash, the leaves of the zucchini plant called tendumi.
Speaker 4: Basically whatever is is fresh and growing. But also I
Speaker 4: like to use the elements, the traditional elements from the
Speaker 4: the animals of the of the territory produced. And the
Speaker 4: recipes I've now pretty much followed very much old recipes
Speaker 4: that are dying out and recipes that are hard to
Speaker 4: hard to even replicate anymore. And those are the ones
Speaker 4: that I love to I love to make it home.
Speaker 4: But they're all driven by simple ingredients. We grow the chickpeas,
Speaker 4: lentils every year. We've now we're now harvesting fair amount.
Speaker 4: Just last week we harvested and it was quite abundant.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting because every year they taste different. There's
Speaker 4: really a vintage of the taste of the beans. And
Speaker 4: if you taste one next to each other, you'd understand
Speaker 4: what I mean. Because every year the climate is different,
Speaker 4: the land is different, and that's reflected in the taste
Speaker 4: of the foods. So what is Sicilian cuisine. We would
Speaker 4: be talking for hours about the history of Sicily, about
Speaker 4: the culture of each different area, the geography of the
Speaker 4: different area, and then of the different social classes, because
Speaker 4: there's so much mix within Sicily, from the peasant cuisine
Speaker 4: to the aristocratic cuisine. And how interestingly enough, the peasant
Speaker 4: cuisine very much often reflects dishes that come from the
Speaker 4: aristocratic cuisine. For example, there's a dish that's called sard
Speaker 4: a becafico, which basically means sardines cooked in the way
Speaker 4: of the little birds that are called becafico. The aristocratic
Speaker 4: recipe was that they were little birds. They were not sardines.
Speaker 4: There were little birds that were stuffed and stuffed with
Speaker 4: bread crumbs and pine nuts and raisins and cheese and
Speaker 4: then roasted. The peasant version was to take what was abundant.
Speaker 4: If you put a net in the sea, especially in
Speaker 4: the springtime, you'll be you'll fill up that net easily
Speaker 4: with with sardines. So that abundance was then translated into
Speaker 4: a copying of a dish that was part of part
Speaker 4: of an aristocratic cuisine. And there's just so many of
Speaker 4: those type of examples. There's another examples with caponata. Caponata
Speaker 4: comes from the word cappone, is the name of a
Speaker 4: fish similar to a small like a machi machi in
Speaker 4: terms of the flesh, and caponata was first made with
Speaker 4: that fish, not red with egg plants. But today it's
Speaker 4: known if you say caponata, everyone knows that that means
Speaker 4: egg plants, right, But that's not the origin of the dish.
Speaker 3: That's interesting, and it sounds like capon which is a
Speaker 3: rooster to us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's capone from pesche Capona, the rooster is
Speaker 4: a different word in sic and Italian.
Speaker 3: It's interesting when I think of recent visits to Sicily
Speaker 3: and also to the southern parts of Italy. I've got eggplant,
Speaker 3: and I grew up I hated eggplant as a child,
Speaker 3: hated it, but I actually love it after going to
Speaker 3: Italy and specifically to Sicily and to Campana, which I
Speaker 3: think I had some of the best eggplant dishes of
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 4: Sure, sure, yeah.
Speaker 3: And yet a lot of people are tendated to use
Speaker 3: eggplant cook with egg plant the United States.
Speaker 4: I feel that a home cook in Sicily probably knows
Speaker 4: about this is something I've said often, but at least
Speaker 4: you need to know a hundred ways of how to
Speaker 4: cook with egg clant as in a Sicilian home, because
Speaker 4: right now, I mean, as we speak, this morning I
Speaker 4: picked I can't tell you how many egg plants, and
Speaker 4: there's more tomorrow to pick, and more than the next day,
Speaker 4: and I'll be every day. It can't be done in
Speaker 4: the same recipe. Tonight, I'm roasting them in the oven,
Speaker 4: very simply, just the very small I harvest them when
Speaker 4: they're really small, cut them in half, and then cut
Speaker 4: little inserts into them, and put pieces of garlic, pieces
Speaker 4: of raw garlic, some mint, some very age cheese, very
Speaker 4: harsh spicy age cheese, and lots of olive oil and
Speaker 4: parsley as well along with the mint, and then just
Speaker 4: roast them in the oven. And they're just fabulous. So
Speaker 4: that's tonight's dinner. We'll have to see for tomorrow. I
Speaker 4: was thinking of making an egg clant parmigiana, which the
Speaker 4: classic recipe here is just slicing them with skin off
Speaker 4: in this case, slicing them, frying them, and then topping
Speaker 4: them with some tomato sauce of course, homemade tomato sauce,
Speaker 4: a basa leaf, and then just a sprinkle of age
Speaker 4: cheese on top.
Speaker 3: But why would you have with that, Melissa?
Speaker 4: Oh, let's see with that, I'd probably have our nusa,
Speaker 4: which is uh which comes from vines that are thirty
Speaker 4: five year old vines that were grafted from the prefiloxide
Speaker 4: of the mother plants. It's not a whe it's not
Speaker 4: a dish to pair with the brukata because the prefiloxida,
Speaker 4: which needs something more more hefty and more something meaty,
Speaker 4: usually make the lamb or the roasted goat when we
Speaker 4: have the brucata the the We also produce a wine
Speaker 4: called petticone, which is quite which is it's fuller and
Speaker 4: more spicy, and that that I usually pair when I
Speaker 4: when I make our homemade sausage, which I make nice
Speaker 4: full of pepper and full of black pepper and wild fennel.
Speaker 3: When you cook, do you think about obviously you cook
Speaker 3: for the season. Do you think about the wine or
Speaker 3: do you know when you think about the wine when
Speaker 3: you're cooking? Or does that I think we do. I'll
Speaker 3: give you an example. We had a roustane. We had
Speaker 3: a roussan and the refrigerator last night and I just
Speaker 3: all I could do was think about that wine, and
Speaker 3: there was nothing in the refrigerator to eat that would
Speaker 3: satisfy what I wanted with that wine. I ended up
Speaker 3: going out and picking up because we kind of live
Speaker 3: in a food does it right now? I end up
Speaker 3: picking up this wonderful ty curry and spicy papaya salad
Speaker 3: because that's all I wanted with that wine. And so
Speaker 3: often when we cook, I think about what the wine
Speaker 3: is first versus what we have, although sometimes it's just
Speaker 3: what we happen to have in the refrigerator, and how
Speaker 3: can we make it more creative and less every day?
Speaker 3: Because I think that's a challenge for a lot of people's,
Speaker 3: like you know, you have an abundance of eggplant, or
Speaker 3: abundance of beans, or abundance of zucchini. How to make
Speaker 3: it different every day? But when we cook, we think
Speaker 3: about the wine just because we're wine.
Speaker 4: No, absolutely, absolutely we do too. But I think that
Speaker 4: I think of it as almost like an ingredient in
Speaker 4: the dish. So I'm cooking and then thinking pairing to
Speaker 4: me is just basically adding another ingredient into the dish,
Speaker 4: if that makes sense, And so probably I think about,
Speaker 4: you know, what I'm cooking first, and then the wine
Speaker 4: comes from there. We also, of course we drink our
Speaker 4: We drink our own wines a lot also because we
Speaker 4: always do different tastings and we have bottles open, so
Speaker 4: we're always tasting our wines. But we also really love
Speaker 4: to taste wines from around the world, so it's become
Speaker 4: a bit of a hobby of ours and and whatt
Speaker 4: You's that also, oh gosh, so much. I mean, we're Barolo,
Speaker 4: we love and the Burgundy. It's everything is intriguing. German whites,
Speaker 4: Austrian whites. We basically have a little bit of everything
Speaker 4: in our little wine cellar. And when we have a
Speaker 4: dish that's interesting, we figure out what to open and
Speaker 4: what to pair with it. But there's a fun fine,
Speaker 4: that's for sure.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, because listen, dinner doesn't taste good with water.
Speaker 3: Let's be real. I understand you have a vineyard project.
Speaker 4: So the vineyard at the moment is forty four hectors,
Speaker 4: and we just this year just planted the wild vines
Speaker 4: for another eight hectors of vineyard. I think you might
Speaker 4: have when yeah, when you came in May, you saw
Speaker 4: the baby vines.
Speaker 3: Twenty four hectors is fairly large just for everybody who
Speaker 3: doesn't know. Now, that's about one hundred and eight acres.
Speaker 4: It's fairly large. I mean taking into consideration that we're
Speaker 4: a family winery because we're basically a meat small small
Speaker 4: to medium sized winery, but still completely family operated. And
Speaker 4: it's we have the requests for the wines, and we
Speaker 4: realized that we needed to we needed to expand just
Speaker 4: a little bit. So this year we added the eight hectors.
Speaker 4: What we do here is that first we plant wild vines.
Speaker 4: So in January we planted those wild vines. Wild vines
Speaker 4: do not produce grapes. So next week, not even this
Speaker 4: is Saturday, it's when two days from now, a group
Speaker 4: of grafters and the average age is seventy eight years old.
Speaker 4: Of the group of grafters who come, there's five of them.
Speaker 4: And it's very hard to find grafters nowadays because it's
Speaker 4: absolutely a dying art. Because if you, for the most part,
Speaker 4: when someone wants to plant a new vineyard, you go
Speaker 4: to the nursery garden, or you take the catalog from
Speaker 4: a nursery garden and you pick out which, let's say,
Speaker 4: clone of Netodaba you'd like, you read the description, you'd
Speaker 4: like it to be more disease resistant, or one that
Speaker 4: works better at a high altitude, or one that has
Speaker 4: more taste of cherry, or so forth. Here Montoni, the
Speaker 4: objective is to look at the past in order to
Speaker 4: make decisions for the future. That's my husband's motto and
Speaker 4: that's become mine as well. And what we very consciously
Speaker 4: decided was if we plant a new vineyard, and when
Speaker 4: we do so, it has to be planted grafted from
Speaker 4: the old plants. That means that we continue the genetic
Speaker 4: code of the old plants, which is a genetic code
Speaker 4: that's unique to Montoni. Especially. There's there's been research done
Speaker 4: on neo davola which is quite interesting. There were thirty
Speaker 4: different specimens of neo davola from around Sicily to and
Speaker 4: within that thirty fifteen different clones were identified. And that
Speaker 4: was only thirty taken, so you can imagine if that
Speaker 4: was expanded. So fifty percent is very very high percentage.
Speaker 4: And the clone that's here at Montoni is of the
Speaker 4: nettle dabola or of the nettle mascalase or so forth,
Speaker 4: is what we want to carry forward genetically. So the
Speaker 4: only way to do so, of course, is to not
Speaker 4: purchase vines from the nursery garden and two graft onto
Speaker 4: the to the wild vines. So it's an amazing scene.
Speaker 4: I'll send you pictures, Melanie from the over the next
Speaker 4: few days, because the whole work job needs to be
Speaker 4: done within a ten to ten day window. Well, the
Speaker 4: grafters will come, they'll take the pieces of the of
Speaker 4: the old vines. And what's interesting is we're grafting a
Speaker 4: part of the vineyard at the highest point. We're grafting
Speaker 4: from old vines that we are researching right now. We
Speaker 4: don't even know the name of the old vines. There's
Speaker 4: some red and some white vines that we are not
Speaker 4: sure even what they are, the very old to uh
Speaker 4: to the land, and we're grafting from them a part
Speaker 4: of the of the vineyard.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Melissa, I'm on your website Feyoda Montoni
Speaker 3: I T and you have a wonderful video explanation of this.
Speaker 3: I love it because it says, basically as you said,
Speaker 3: you can set up a vineyard with two roads to follow.
Speaker 3: You buy the plants from the nursery or you propagate
Speaker 3: the ancient vines from your vineyards. And that is like
Speaker 3: for someone who's not in the wine business doesn't understand that.
Speaker 3: It's like if you had the mother of a very
Speaker 3: fine balsamic vinegar, when to make a really fine balsamic vinegar,
Speaker 3: you'd have to start with the mother and you have
Speaker 3: to propagate. And that's really what you're doing, is you're
Speaker 3: propagating and keep and that is something very unique to
Speaker 3: Fayouda Montoni. I want to underscore that like fifty times
Speaker 3: because it is it is labor intensive. I'm kind of
Speaker 3: blown away that that they're seventy eight years old and
Speaker 3: what happens when they die out. But basically you're taking,
Speaker 3: as you said, the genetic code and that takes time.
Speaker 3: So when you're doing that, now, when will you actually
Speaker 3: see vines producing fruit?
Speaker 4: Well, by next year? What comes up is the is
Speaker 4: what's been grafted on, So in terms of variety, would
Speaker 4: be already the plant by next year will that grows
Speaker 4: will be the variety that we that we uh graft
Speaker 4: onto the wild plant. By the time we see fruit
Speaker 4: could be let's say the second year that it's planted.
Speaker 4: But we cut off those those clusters, So we'll cut
Speaker 4: them off in order to strengthen the roots of those vines.
Speaker 4: We'll do that for a few years. So the first
Speaker 4: sign of of of grapes that we could could look
Speaker 4: at will be about five years down the road. But
Speaker 4: it's it's really for a long term project. It's a
Speaker 4: it's a vineyard that we planted so so that our
Speaker 4: sons can have can can can harvest the fruits as
Speaker 4: they grow up. Because it's really, uh, it's a project
Speaker 4: that we look at. It's a four year project. It's
Speaker 4: not it's not something that you look at for so
Speaker 4: next year we're already already making wine.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's important. This is this is a
Speaker 3: labor of love. This is you know, looking at the
Speaker 3: genetics of wine. And it is not like the wine
Speaker 3: that are most people in the United States are seeing
Speaker 3: on shelves supermarkets, which is you know, like the equivalent
Speaker 3: of fast food wine half the time. This is wine
Speaker 3: that is you know, they're slow cooking. This is slow
Speaker 3: cultivation and evolution of of of of vine and it's
Speaker 3: quite fascinating and like a lot of people don't understand that, but.
Speaker 4: This is how we do everything on the farm. It's
Speaker 4: I know, of course you focus focus on the wine,
Speaker 4: but that's the heritage grains. We save our grain year
Speaker 4: to year. That's that's a strain of grain that it
Speaker 4: is not found everywhere, and it's not a regular modern
Speaker 4: version genetically modified Durham wheat. The tomatoes that the tomato
Speaker 4: plants I have, the seeds that are from very old
Speaker 4: old versions. Even the vinegar that I make that I
Speaker 4: use in my kaponata has a mother mother vinegar that
Speaker 4: came from my husband's great aunts, a great uncle's mother,
Speaker 4: so it goes back over a century ago. That to
Speaker 4: us is the basis of everything, and it's I don't
Speaker 4: know if the excitement comes through in my voice, but
Speaker 4: I how I could express that. It's just the driving
Speaker 4: force between what we do, and it's what I could
Speaker 4: only have dreamed of doing as a child, going back
Speaker 4: to when I was twelve years old, cooking in our
Speaker 4: home to fill the fill the home with the scent
Speaker 4: of sicily. Today I'm able to do that, and today
Speaker 4: I'm able to realize the realize those dreams. And it's
Speaker 4: just a true blessing.
Speaker 3: You really are living the room. And David and I
Speaker 3: were blessed because your son us once an incredible care
Speaker 3: package with the most amazing pasta and chick We still
Speaker 3: have some of those chickwas we actually, you know, we
Speaker 3: fight over wind to use them because we keep we
Speaker 3: want to hold on everything and honeys and the bront
Speaker 3: these pistache Scilian pistachios and honey and everything. It's just amazing.
Speaker 3: Can you do you? Can you do? You sell your products?
Speaker 3: Is there a way for anyone in the United States
Speaker 3: to get your food products? And you can get the wines,
Speaker 3: but what about the food?
Speaker 4: Well, what we've done now is we've we've sold on
Speaker 4: very smaller scale and to some of our partners around
Speaker 4: the world that have organic shops or really focus on
Speaker 4: the organic, especially with our olive oil or the lentils.
Speaker 4: But we have made the decision to also package and
Speaker 4: sell on the more small scale some of our some
Speaker 4: of these products like the pastas, the tomato sauces. It's
Speaker 4: just that it's we don't want it to take away
Speaker 4: from our focus on the wine because it's in order
Speaker 4: to make wine that to make good wine, it really
Speaker 4: takes our dedication and being a family, family operated business.
Speaker 4: It's those three hundred and sixty five days a year
Speaker 4: and are not going to the beaches and are not
Speaker 4: taking vacations, and it's this. It's full time dedicated to
Speaker 4: that and to tasting all the tanks every ten days,
Speaker 4: and to being a part of the seller operations day
Speaker 4: to day. So our other products are where I have
Speaker 4: a huge passion for them and I put I put
Speaker 4: energy into them. But of course we don't want them
Speaker 4: to to take away from our main focus, which which
Speaker 4: is it's the wines, and that's why I do small scale.
Speaker 4: So this year, in terms of tomatoes, I have one
Speaker 4: hector of tomatoes planted. The lentils which are easier to
Speaker 4: cultivate and easier to easier to manage on a large scale.
Speaker 4: We we seeded the ten hectors more or less this year.
Speaker 4: But everything has to be proportioned in order to keep
Speaker 4: wind our focus.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm going to underscores we start to wind
Speaker 3: down this wonderful conversation. This is a very special place
Speaker 3: in the heart and soul and center of Italy, which I,
Speaker 3: David and I are blessed to have visited. Blessed for
Speaker 3: those of you who do decide to come to Italy,
Speaker 3: whether you visit Fayota, Montoni or not, you can get
Speaker 3: the wines in Italy and in the United States. But
Speaker 3: when you travel. Wherever you travel, go off the beaten
Speaker 3: track to the heart and soul of a region. Don't
Speaker 3: just stay where all the tourists are on the coasts
Speaker 3: or in the big city exactly, you won't meet the
Speaker 3: real You'll see the soul, but you won't see the heart,
Speaker 3: and that, I think is what it's special about Fayota Montoni.
Speaker 3: There's a soul throughout Sicily, but you're in the heart.
Speaker 3: It's a beating heart of what's happening and a living,
Speaker 3: working farm and family. And I feel that's what I
Speaker 3: felt when I was there.
Speaker 4: Well, your words are very beautiful and very touching to
Speaker 4: me because it's exactly what I feel. But I'm not
Speaker 4: always sure if everyone else feels the same. But the
Speaker 4: fact that you felt that way when you came to
Speaker 4: Feldo Montoni confirms how I feel about living here and
Speaker 4: about dedicating my life to this land. And it's it's
Speaker 4: also a life that's dedicated not only to this land,
Speaker 4: but to this beating heart of Sicily that really needs
Speaker 4: attention and really needs to be not forgotten, because if
Speaker 4: anything about about the work we do, it's about bringing
Speaker 4: life to the territory and not letting it be abandoned
Speaker 4: because it could easily be so, but that's not That's
Speaker 4: obviously not what our objective is. And I hope that
Speaker 4: in my next book, which is basically it's basically all
Speaker 4: of my field work. We could call it, but a
Speaker 4: collection of my diaries from the past years, I hope
Speaker 4: that I can best represent what this beating heart of
Speaker 4: the of the core of Sicily means, and not only
Speaker 4: what it means to me, but how it's a reflection
Speaker 4: an example for the rest of the world in today's
Speaker 4: modern world.
Speaker 3: Well, you're a beautiful writer. Again, I just want to
Speaker 3: underscore that the book that is available right now is Sicily.
Speaker 3: It's by Rissouli, The Cookbook, and it is fabulous. I
Speaker 3: can't wait to read your next one. I love the
Speaker 3: fact that you followed your heart to the place you
Speaker 3: want to be, because that is what I'm all about,
Speaker 3: is helping people follow their heart and live the life
Speaker 3: they choose. And I love the fact that you've done that.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining me. I'm getting hungry
Speaker 3: just thinking about everything. I can't wait to see you again,
Speaker 3: see you and Fabia and the family again. Until then,
Speaker 3: I toast to everything you're doing.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Melanie, and thank you for having me and
Speaker 4: I warmly warmly welcome you and David back as soon
Speaker 4: as possible. This is your retreat and wherever whenever you
Speaker 4: want to come stay for an extended period of time,
Speaker 4: You're more than welcome to do so.
Speaker 3: Thank you, I appreciate it. And good luck with harvest
Speaker 3: this year, all right.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you. I'll keep you posted definitely with
Speaker 4: some photographs as we graft and as we harvest.
Speaker 3: All right, thank you very much.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Stranded in the part of
Speaker 3: PA