Crystal-clear shots of Sardinian Filu è Ferru, otherwise known as “fire water”
A 20th Century Sardinian banditto (photo courtesy of La Nuova Sardegna)
I had my first taste of grappa in a ‘Wild West’ bar in what felt like a Wild West town in southern Sardinia, perched on top of a mountain range called the Seven Brothers.
Burcei isn’t the prettiest of places to visit, but at 700m above sea level it is one of the highest and the views over the cherry orchards for which it is famous are worth the gear-crunching struggle up the pass.
Maybe it was the altitude or the relief at having survived the switchbacks, but the memory of that first shot and the thick black coffee that accompanied it in the Il Nostro Saloon with its mini ‘aqua vitae’ still behind the bar and an incongruous cartoon cowboy over the door stuck with me.
The Burcei settlers were mostly shepherds, who came from the notorious Barbagia region to the north – the breeding ground of the lawless banditti, some of whom operated on the fringes of political activism, many of whom were villains and thieves and all of whom now seem to have been reinvented as cultural heroes, best described as ‘shepherds with attitude’. One of the most famous was rearrested as recently as 2013 having allegedly turned over a new leaf to begin work as a tour guide taking visitors around his nefarious haunts.
The cult of banditry was real and dangerous. Their activities ranged from sheep and cattle rustling to killings, kidnap and even bombings. Yet local people, at least those not directly caught up in the bloodletting, still often talk about these characters with tolerance and even a nationalistic pride. Latterly, they’ve become tourist attractions in their own right; they even have their own T-shirts.
There’s little doubt these hard-living men would have been involved in the illegal distilling from which the Sardinian grappa takes its name of Filu è Ferru or ‘iron wire’. It’s a throwback to the days when villagers hid evidence of their illicit, untaxed grappa-making in the ground, using thin wires wrapped around the bottlenecks to poke up through the soil in order to locate them more easily.
In Barbagia they had their own name for it – Abbardente, which means water that burns, and for years grappa was seen as a rough, peasant drink, popular only with farmers and revolutionaries who could stomach it. A holidaymaker’s trip to Italy wasn’t complete without a slug of throat-paralysing grappa, but it was rarely seen in bars outside of its home country until a remarkably determined woman, Giannola Nonino of the Nonino distillery in Percoto Italy, decided to popularize it in the 70s.
She began making grappa from a single grape variety and branding it in much the same way as single malt whisky is marketed in Scotland. Previously, grappa had been made from the spent grape skins and seeds left over from the wine making process with several varieties mixed up together and often with the grape stems thrown in for good measure.
Nonino’s altogether more refined product, which she pressed on journalists, celebrities and politicians, elevated grappa to national hero status – much like the banditti – and since 1989 its production has been protected under EU law. It’s unique in that it’s distilled from solid material – the grape pomace – and not fermented juice, as with grape brandy. No similar distillate produced outside of Italy can go by the same name.
Once enjoyed almost exclusively by elderly Italians as a caffè coretto, added to cups of espresso, grappa has now entered a new era, adopted by the ‘it’ crowd as a cocktail mixer, although purists would argue it is still best drunk straight from the bottle or ice-cold from the freezer in specially shaped, long-stemmed grappa glasses. Either way, at up to 86 per cent proof (alcohol by volume), it delivers as big a kick as it ever did.
During the plague years, Italian physicians routinely prescribed up to a quarter of a litre of grappa to be drunk on an empty stomach. Although anyone who survived that would almost certainly have had the strength to survive the plague, the doctors nevertheless took credit for the cure.
Back then, grappa (which was first distilled in Bassano del Grappa in Italy’s northern Veneto region around the 14th century) was a cottage industry. Today, 40 million bottles are produced commercially in Italy every year for both the domestic and export trade. Sardinia’s Filu è Ferru is regarded as being among the best and certainly the one with the most colourful cultural history, which is why the Sardinian government has been lobbying Europe for years to receive the same protected name status for Filu è Ferru and Abbardente as some other regional producers have for theirs, including Grappa di Barolo and Grappa del Friuli.
Abberdente from the Distillerie Lussurgesi in Oristano
Most wineries in Sardinia have their own brand of Filu è Ferru or Abbardente, from the young or giovane grappa, bottled crystal clear, straight from steel vats and allowed to rest for six months, to riserva, which is matured for up to 18 months in previously wine-soaked wooden casks during a stage known as the lungo sonno (the long sleep). This ‘sleeping’ imparts a cognac-style yellow or brown hue.
There are also untold amounts of Sardinian grappa still made in people’s homes. They no longer bother hiding the evidence – the authorities tend to turn a blind eye to grappa made for family and friends these days – but the name has stuck.
And I rather like it.
The story of grappa making is told at the excellent Museo della Grappa run by the Poli Distillerie in Bassano del Grappa and nearby Schiavon in Northern Italy. http://www.poligrappa.com/
Most wineries in Sardinia make grappa, but perhaps one of the best to visit for an authentic taste of ‘fire water’ is Giuseppe and Grazia Sedilesu’s family-run vineyard at Mamoiada in the heart of ‘banditto country’ in the Barbagia region. They make Abbardente from the island’s famous cannonau grape. http://www.giuseppesedilesu.com/en/wines/abbardente-mamuthone/
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