Walking the three kilometers that separate Porretta Terme from Sambuca Pistoiese today can be a good opportunity for a walk in a piedmont landscape, among the gentle slopes that characterize the slopes of the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines.
It must be known, however, that these same three kilometers were, for centuries, a border and conflict zone, in which two cultures and two systems of government bordered and interpenetrated. It was here, in fact, that the border between the Papal State, which administered Bologna, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which ruled from the Apennines to the Tyrrhenian Sea, was delineated (a hamlet of Sambuca is still called "La Dogana").
A transit place that united Bologna to Pistoia, a channel of communication on which levies of all sorts were imposed and on which the alternating fortunes of the towns and rural communities of the area were played out.
A gray area, in which two different ways of understanding cooking and, at least in part, life were also mixed: on the one hand, oil and ribollita, on the other, the art of hand-rolled pasta.
A mestizo territory, whose vocation for exchange and mingling also meant that a particular idiom settled. An inextricable weave of Bolognese accents and typical Tuscan doc overtones, so characteristic that it has even been codified and consigned to posterity in the form of a "dictionary of the Pavia dialect."
In a context so marked by the whims of History stands precisely Pavana, a tiny village in the municipality of Sambuca Pistoiese, which today is known to most for being the buen retiro of Francesco Guccini, one of the sharpest singers of modern times and of our society.
A great artist who, I must say, in this remote corner of Tuscany has also found a way to cultivate an intense relationship with his mother land. A relationship that goes beyond the cycle of the farmer's passionate work to result in something magical like the shaping of a microclimate that I would define as almost personal. In fact, in Guccini's garden in Pavana one can quite unexpectedly find, alongside the classic range of local vegetables and a few native species of fruit such as "zambelle" (cherries) and "morasello" (table grapes), also a lime and an orange tree, which bear fruit with regularity despite the 500 meters above sea level in this part of the Tuscan Apennines.
All this in addition to an apricot plant that has given rise to one of the most beautiful family rituals I can remember hearing about: since the plant produces few fruits, almost all of them delicious, the ritual calls for each fruit to be divided in two and then each person eats one half. This is so that a particularly good fruit, or a particularly bad one, does not happen in one piece to only one of the two Guccinis.
But Sambuca Pistoiese is also a favorite place for music lovers for another reason: in the hamlet of Treppio you can visit a beautiful, recently restored eighteenth-century organ on which artists from all over the world still play. Preserved in the church of St. Michael the Archangel, it constitutes a stop of interest for laymen as well.
And after a visit to the church and a walk in the open air, everyone to the "Caciosteria" to enjoy an extraordinary dish of gnudi con la ricotta or tagliatelle with Cinta ragu, made by Betty Zummo with great attention to raw materials and traditional recipes. Finally, for a souvenir purchase of good local cured meats, simply move to the nearby Savigni butcher shop.
Caciosteria
Ponte della Venturina, 47 Loc. Pavana, Sambuca Pistoiese Tel. 0573 892520
Macelleria e Salumeria Savigni
Tel. 0534 60072 Loc. Pavana, Sambuca Pistoiese By getile concession of
www.slowfood.it
Vivere Slow is Carlo Petrini's weekly column inLa Repubblica
