On our friend Cristiana’s advice, we visit Santadi for a particular reason: to eat at the agriturismo La Grotta del Tesoro. Tesoro means treasure. Not sure what the treasure is but we’re hoping it’s the dinner because this is a detour.
On the drive inland, the landscape changes dramatically from jagged hills covered with rock outcroppings to bucolic rolling farmland. We pass through small towns of low buildings along a straight one-road-in-one-road-out. I admire the houses’ paint combinations of russet, turquoise, and squash yellow. In the countryside, the wheat has been cut, leaving pale stubble. The harvest over, the grape leaves already shrivel and brown.
LA GROTTA DEL Tesoro is a few kilometers outside the hilly town of Santadi. We turn into the driveway at a big not-old, not-new farmhouse. Paola, the owner, is watering plants. She’s tiny and wiry but obviously strong. An ancient relative in the old-school black dress and kerchief tends her birdcage, which seems to have way too many birds in it. Then she starts to sweep with one of those witches’ brooms made of dried ginestra (yellow broom) twigs. I love those and haven’t seen one in Tuscany in probably five years.
“Cristiana sent us. She says you’re one of the world’s great cooks!”
“Ah, la giornalista Cristiana. How is she? What would you like tonight, the pork or the kid?”
We choose the pork. She’s amazed that we are American. “Not German?” she asks twice, as though we might be mistaken.
She shows us to our room, which is plain as can be, and says “Eight o’clock.”
WE TAKE A walk around the farm. Pork, we ordered. Huge pens of the donors to the meal are arranged by age. They are clean. Some gargantuan pigs with those prehistoric darting eyes, some medium Three-Little-Pigs ones, who might want to build a brick house, and lots of small ones, like Toot and Puddle. “Dio, Ed, I remember that Paola said maiolino.” That’s one of these little ones. I walk on before he can tell me that if you eat meat, you have to…And before I tell him once again that I could be a vegetarian, and he tells me that I’ve always said that, but I have not become a vegetarian. We let it go and drive in to look at Santadi.
EVERYTHING’S CLOSED. NOT sure why, as it’s only six. Supposed to be open, the archeological museum is shut tight. We’re on its steep street and the sun is low, sending a benison of sweet light over three women talking in a doorway. They don’t know they are illuminated. They are beatific, as though they might be angels announcing to someone beyond the door a new coming. We quietly stare.
To their right, a house the color of butterscotch, no—lighter—marigolds. Old rosy roof tiles scallop along the top. Beside the closed, recessed door, a trumpet vine has been trained into a Y. I take a photo and when I look at it, I think: This is why I came to Santadi. The delicate leaves of the vine cast a filigree shadow. The golden color of the plaster looks as if light surges out from inside. Benign luck! Or, the gods who made the three women into momentary angels tapped my camera with a wand and gave me a gift.
OTHER PEOPLE, NINE, I count, have checked in. Germans! Everyone fresh and ready at eight, when the dining room opens. Overlit. The table is set with blue paper tablecloth and napkins. Again, plain as can be! Already, the antipasti are waiting. Prosciutto, fried bread, roasted peppers and eggplant, cheeses, salume. Ordinary but extraordinary because the prosciutto, thin as tissue paper, has the salty-sweet balance just right, the vegetables were picked this afternoon and roasted in good oil, the salume made at home, and the two goat cheeses fresh today, while the pecorino is crumbly and well aged. Fried bread, which is so much better than it sounds, needs a light touch with the batter. Paola has the magic.
Santadi is where some of Italy’s best wines come from. We order Rocca Rubia Carignano del Sulcis, 2014, made eight minutes away from where we sit. The simple tumblers on the table are replaced with proper glasses. Paola’s son congratulates us on a good choice. Ed takes a long sip and pronounces it sound and fantastic. “Tastes like dry stalks after rain, and violets crushed under a boot.” Poet! It’s a lusty, full, juicy wine with lots of stamina.
Out comes the pork. Crusty, crunchy skin all bronzed and shiny. The succulent meat needs no knife. Chicory, zucchini, roasted potatoes, salad. Just what you’d cook but squared and cubed because of the quality of the ingredients. Talk about terroir!
BACK TO THE room. Why does it feel spooky? It’s clean. Bathroom light makes me look like fresh goat cheese. Bed is okay. Roosters crow all night. Are they crazy?
We leave early. Grazie, Paola!
We’re catching a ferry to Isola di San Pietro.