Posted on 04/22/2006 7:56:23 PM PDT by Pharmboy
ROBBIO, Italy (Reuters) - Wine conjures up the image of cultured drinkers sipping their way delicately through a full-bodied vintage.
But for two history buffs with a passion for the tipple, northern Italy has the barbarians to thank for its long wine-making tradition.
Luca Sormani, from Como, and Fulvio Pescarolo, from the tiny town of Robbio near Milan, have traced the region's wine culture all the way back to its Celtic roots and have started making it according to ancient methods.
Celtic tribes from farther north -- known to the Romans as "Barbari" -- conquered northern parts of Italy about 2,500 years ago, settled there and started draining marshes, cultivating land and growing vines.
"There is a bit of the barbarian in us," said Pescarolo, 51, who is the ninth generation of farmers from the rice-growing western part of Lombardy. "We feel we are part of this nature."
Interest in all things Celtic -- from music to mystical rites -- took off in northern Italy in the mid 1990s, fanned by the Northern League party which rose to prominence with demands for independence for the north.
Sormani and Pescarolo said their interest in Celtic culture had nothing to with politics and that, instead of the symbols and rites, they studied what was close to their hearts -- a blend of agriculture and wine-growing.
NO HELMETS WITH HORNS
"It's not that we want to put on helmets with horns. It's not about mythology or cults," said Sormani, 40, who has a doctorate in agriculture.
"We feel we are part of a tradition which dates back to the times of Celts."
Standing in a vineyard on a man-made hill in the middle of table-flat rice fields in western Lombardy, Sormani recalled how he spent years studying the history of the
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I want to know who to thank for deciding to substitute milk for water in it?
"Celts are from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany in France and I believe it is said even Bohemia in the Czech Republic-Slovakia area."
Celts probably started in west or central Asia, migrated west. Some of the best Celtic ruins and artifacts are in Southern Germany and Switzerland.
Their continued migration took them to France, Spain. And later to the British Isles. Probably in two or more waves, because Britain has two distict Celtic language groups.
One is Welsh Gaelic, shared with Brittany. The other is Irish/Scottish Gaelic.
"How the Irish Saved Civilization"
It's an excellent book.
Hubby spent his whole life glorying in his Sicilian ancestry until I informed him that his surname is of Celtic "place name" origin.
Ferrera Italy was an ancient Celtic iron working site long, *long* before "Italians" ever got there.
Not surprisingly, hubby is a welder/metal fabricator and where we live used to be the log house of a colonial blacksmith.
Odder still, the 3 houses in the immediate area were all part of a blacksmith/wheelwright village on the old National Pike during the westward expansion/wagon train days and all 3 houses are inhabited by metal workers.
This area had a Colonial iron furnace nearby due to all the iron-ore bearing rock in the area.
[which was founded by a Huguenot immigrant named Launcelot Jaques; yet another Gaul]
The land called them 'home', I suspect.....:)
My surname comes from the proto-Celtic solar deity "Lug", who was skilled in many arts, as am I.
[mythopaeic "genetics" rule].....LOL!
Anthropologists believe that the people we know as "Celts" were first recognized as a cohesive, distinctive culture that originated in the steppes of the Caucaucus mountains and they spread westward and southward from there.
God gave the Irish whiskey so that they wouldn't rule the world.
God gave the Irish the potato famine so that America would.
[old saying]
Obviously written by people who had too much wine and time on their hands.
Italy probably got wine and grape growing from the ancient Greeks who were drinking the stuff about 1500 years before Christ, and had colonized southern Italy and Sicily long before the Celts invaded northern and central Italy.
I prefer Guiness Stout myself.
"because Britain has two distict Celtic language groups. "
Interstingly enough, P Celtic and Q celtic are governed by the shape of the head, more specifically, the soft palate.
The glottal stop as in "loch" is nearly impossible for the Welsh/Brittany group to pronouce due to the shape of their soft palates.
There were the "long headed Celts" and the older "Round headed Celts".
The long heads were more adapted to Q celtic and the round heads P celtic.
That's how "Mac" became "Map" {shortened to 'Ap'] for "son of" as in Ap Lllewllyn or Mab, as in the book of the Mabinogion.
I'm primarily Scots/Irish but physically I'm a throwback to the Welsh in my lines and I cannot manage a glottal stop worth a d@mn.
The Welsh language, however, rolls off my tongue like melted butter.
"The glottal stop as in "loch" is nearly impossible for the Welsh/Brittany group to pronouce due to the shape of their soft palates."
????????????????
Give me a break.
And only people with shovel shaped incisors can properly speak Chinese.
Go argue with the linguistics experts.
I'm merely passing along their findings.
[a bit combative, aren't we?]
"Ferrera Italy was an ancient Celtic iron working site long, *long* before "Italians" ever got there."
You don't know what you are talking about and I suggest you read something solid about Ancient Mediterranean history. What was an "Italian" in Early pre-Roman Italy anyway? An Etruscan? A Greek? An Elymian? A Ligurian?
They were all there long before any Celts arrived and then they too, by geographic definition, became "Italian".
At that time there were numerous different ethnic groups living in Italy with Italic people being the predominant element, and this was well into the iron age. Celts didn't invade Italy until some time during the early Roman Republic.
Although the Celts were skilled metal workers, the ancient people of Italy certainly didn't need them to teach them iron-working, a skill which went back to the Hittites about 1400 B.B. in Anatolia. The Greek people of Italy were well versed in the making and use of iron weapons and armor. So were people like the Samnites and Italic tribes of Central Italy, Etruscans and probably Ligurians.
"How the Irish Saved Civilization" is a typical piece of Celtic bombast put to writting. The author took a number of valid premises - like Ireland being a center of learninig and culture in the Middle Ages and expanded it into an totally unabashed piece of inflated Irish propaganda.
The Irish are and always have been, legends in their own minds.
A get combative when I read something preposterous - like people of one ethnic group being unable to properly frame some sound due an imagined physical consistency involving some alleged anatomical feature.
People are people and anybody with practise can learn to speak any language.
An Icelander could learn to click like a Bushman and a Bushman could learn classical Latin with the proper motivation and practise.
There are a lot of "experts" in linguistics and physical anthropology who are closet racists. Different ethnic groups tend to display certain physical features but I think linking those features to an ability to enunciate a certain sound is rather stretching it.
Sort of like Erich von Daneken and his ilk and their theories about pyramids and space visitors.
Uh.. is that your picture with the red hair on your website??
Foreget ANYTHING I said. You're always right in my eyes.
Your husband is a very lucky guy.
Pesto Sauce was invented by the Persians.
ROFL!
Yes, that's me in all my "legend in my own mind" glory.
If I can hunt down the articles on the head shapes, I'll post it for you.
It may take a while as I have literally thousands of Celtic website bookmarks and it's entirely possible the article is one of the hundreds of Celtic history books I have.
It'll turn up eventually.....:)
[my husbands finds me to be quite a wild little handful so I can't say he exactly considers himself "lucky"]....;-D
I'll leave you with a classic self-deprecating Irish saying;
"Every other race has a culture; the Irish have a psychosis."
Hey...at least we're honest about it.....:)
"Sort of like Erich von Daneken and his ilk and their theories about pyramids and space visitors."
Now be nice.
Von Looniken is one of my favorite [unintentional] humorists.
Hey--you're the Celt! LOL...
The Irish are a race
That God created mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad.
[I love that little guy]....;D
Now.....FREE ULSTER!
LOL!
Yup. Presently, my best estimate is Gansu Province, China. They were probably the Tocharians of the Tarim Basin. Tocharian is an extinct Indo-European language that is most closely related to the ancient Celtic Languages.
These folks, The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy, were found all over western China (up to) 4,000 years ago. Their fabric style, color, mfg techniques and material mirror exactly the Celtic fabrics found 1,000 years later and 5,000 miles away in the famous Celtic sites in Halstadt, Austria. This subject is covered in an excellent book titled The Mummies Of Urumchi by Elizabeth Barber.
The 'magic' priests of the Emperors of the Han Dynasty were known for their distinctive red-hair. Also, there are many poems written in Chinese about the green eyes of the Emperors of the Han Dynasty.
Click to be +/- on this low volume wine ping list.Oenology news ping.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.