Every year our local village, Loro Piceno, gives over three days of village life (closed streets, everyone out dancing, the whole bit) celebrating vino cotto (literally ‘cooked wine’). Isn’t that great? In our world of bland brandness and general Starbuckification (though – proud fact – Italy is the only European country not to have a Starbucks), I find it consoling that a short flight away from London there are thousands of people spending three days celebrating something that 99% of us have never even heard of.
So what the heck is this vino cotto that makes it worth such a party? I mean even Martin Luther King only gets one day. What can be three times as good as he? The answer is a strange kind of medieval homebrew which tastes somewhere between fine sherry, fine port and paint stripper depending on who you are talking to. It is made by taking freshly crushed grapes and boiling the juice down over a period of several days, very very carefully, then ageing it for years (or longer if you forget, which apparently quite often happens, the task often falling to the more ancient members of the family) and eventually daring to drink it.
Jason and I have come round on it. And like anything of course it depends on the quality; there is undoubtedly the paintstripper end of the spectrum. But at the good end there is some pretty fine rustic stuff. It is sweet and heady and tastes pleasingly, er, can I say continental? It is just not a drink that would be made in Britain. And it is the local speciality of Loro Piceno, dating back you know the usual centuries. Which is enough reason to celebrate.
The Loro Piceno Vino Cotto festival happens in August every year, around the time of Ferragosto, one of Italy’s most important national holidays, on 15th August. There are local vendors 
selling artisanal goods from socks to honey and unlikely bands playing on the unfeasibly large stage set up in the village centre. One year we saw cheerleaders from Idaho, another a procession of brass brands from I think it was Ukraine. It is a wonder well worth beholding. And of course secreted down small alleys, and in the newly enshrined ‘vino cotto’ museum, are old timers and young bucks comparing stories and secrets about how to turn out the best cooked wine Loro Piceno has ever known.
