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Crime Wine |
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| 09/12/2010 |
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Giovanni Negri makes wine, was head of the Radical Party and a Member of Parliament; has written novels about wine and has now come out with his first crime story, Il sangue di Montalcino.
“Wine experts live in a closed, self-referential environment, dividing the world among wine sellers and winemakers,” says Negri. Detective Cosulich, a sophisticated, taciturn, sensitive man who knows nothing about winemaking is catapulted into this when a winemaker murder is discovered among the vineyards of Franciacorta, in the abbey of Sant’Antimo, under a portrait of Saint Christopher.
“The winemaker is a strange character. He’s a mix of a diviner, alchemist, poet and dreamer. His goal is to invent a new wine, but he doesn’t charm. It’s always the wine that charms.” And the book also tries to understand why wine is so important in our culture: “Wine is closely tied to Catholicism, as well as other religions. Wine is sacred in all cultures.”
Il sangue di Montalcino unfolds as the search for the “First Grape,” says the author, “the place where the first vineyard was born. Naturally, this is a search of poets. The true business is done by those who make wine to quench thirst, so-called ‘petrol wine.’ Yet both this kind of wine and vintage wine are judged only by the market. The market forces you to make good wine.”
After this book, Negri is ready for new adventures. “I’m very interested in spices, in their implications in Western history, and the Treaty of Amsterdam through which the Dutch gained control of the spice market, in exchange for which they ceded the first American colonies to the English. I also have other stories, and perhaps after another six, seven books I can tell a story about a murder in Parliament, another closed and self-referential world.”
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