Why Does This Story About Gross Wine Make This Place Sound So Appealing?
Why Does This Story About Gross Wine Make This Place Sound So Appealing?
Corked Prosecco in Palermo
Motley Sicilian men line the wooden benches outside the Taverna Azzurra, chain smoking and nursing cheap, frosty, high-alcohol beer. It’s Thursday in Palermo and the men have been here since at least 3 pm.
Nestled between major roads, among the street art imprinted on peeling concrete walls, the Taverna has seen better days. A confetti of cigarette butts pave the way to its dingy interior. The stink of sun-warmed garbage mingles with diesel fumes from the still running motor of a moped. The moped’s owner greets the drinking men with kisses on both cheeks.
We take our drinks outside by the fruit and vegetable sellers. One euro for a plastic cup of prosecco. It’s corked and smells like feet. We gulp it down anyway.
The music blasting from inside the bar shifts seamlessly from Jimi Hendrix into Italian ballads. Men are loitering by motorcycles and mopeds, watching teenage girls with bare midriffs and coy glances strut by, feigning imperviousness to the eyes that follow them. Rotund children wobble up and down the alley, part of the parade of pedestrians, on a catwalk flanked by fruit stalls and second-hand trinkets. The motor of the temporarily abandoned moped hums.
Scrawny young men lean self-consciously against walls, chatting with the older men. Boys learning how to be men. Muscles—and egos—taut and stretched. South Asian street vendors ply their wares up and down the narrow lanes, avoiding stony-faced locals adamant that they will not be bothered during the sacred hours of aperitivo. The streets buzz with genteel poverty, bravado, and teenage desire.
A neighborhood dog bats a rock back and forward across the cobble stones.
As the heat of the day starts to cool, nearby vendors fry up squid and prawns for the drinkers and the Taverna Azzurra crowd shifts, from middle aged and elderly men to a hipper crowd of men and women in their twenties and thirties.
Displaced, the older patrons drift away, down narrow streets to houses nearby. Their wives, a bar woman informs us, have already called them home for evening meals that are rapidly cooling on the table.
The benches running street side start to fill up, and we call out for Americanos. The bartender’s combover is fooling no one, but his mixing skills are admirable. Amber Campari joins Vermouth and tonic water: it’s called an Americano, but to us the sweet and bitter tastes like Sicily.