Recycling the South
One Man's Annual Crusade to Reimagine the South of Italy's, From Seasonal Beach Towns, to the Purveyor of the World's Greatest Food, Wine and Extra-Virgin Oil.
Palermo: Nino's Salty Wines

It was the first phone call I placed. 'Nino', I said. 'I'm coming to Sicily'.

'Outstanding! 'The finocchietto in the garden is almost ready', he said. There was a long silence.

'Nino?', I asked. 'Are you there?' I heard him swallow.

'And I know where I can locate some excellent strawberries. I also have a friend that is a baker'.

I've only known him for a few years but you could hear it in his voice, that he was already mentally loading up his car with his favourite foods. A flat of little red strawberries. Bags of sweet and nutty bread. A cardboard box that clanks over bumpy road, resembling the highest two keys on a piano. And so that was that. Lunch was planned.

All I had to do was find a way to get to Palermo, where my five-week bicycle trip would begin with a lunch with Nino, one of my favourite people, ever.

'Breadcrumbs', I heard him mutter as I hung up the phone.

We met at the open-air market in Ballarò, downtown Palermo, a city that somehow seems just one town over from Istanbul, in every way but geography. You almost expect to hear crackly calls to prayer from warbly speakers. And it takes a few seconds to understand what the vendors are barking: their words are truncated here. Somehow, though, when you really listen, it's still Italian.

The Ballarò market is the kind of market that's almost too difficult to shop in: not because nothing looks good.

But because everything does. Let your mind wander even for a second and you'll have enough for your next six meals.

As we walked Nino's eyes narrowed as he spied some sgombri, the Italian word for 'mackerel'.

'How much are they a kilo', he asked me, grinning like a proud father.

I looked again.

'Crafty aren't they, the vendors', he said, laughing. He was referring to the little tails on the 9's, the foxy little numbers that masquerade as '0's.

Back at the tiny four-story apartment I rented, his wife Angela starts to cut the finocchietto, a wild version of fennel that they grow in their city garden.

The clean, green, slightly licorice smell drifts down to the other three floors, until the whole house smells like an open field.

As the two of them unpack their bags and boxes of the stuff they brought from Marsala, I catch a sideways,slightly embarrassed glance from him. You see it a lot here in the south: Ask a Southern to go anywhere further than 20 minutes from home and they're taking provisions.

It's a trait that charms me completely.

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