Chapter seven of V. opens with some very fancy dentistry, as New York dentist Dudley Eigenvalue admires his treasured set of dentures, “each tooth a different precious metal”. Not too many pages later, we’re in front of a wine shop on the Ponte Vecchio, Florence, with a gem of a bottle.

Signor Mantissa is on the bridge with “a seedy-looking Calabrese named Cesare” drinking Broglio wine “and feeling unhappy.” Mantissa himself is a bit of a gem too—our narrator describes his body as “small, well-wrought and somehow precious, as if it were the forgotten creation of any goldsmith […] shrouded now in dark serge and waiting to be put up for auction,” (p. 159). Meanwhile, his friend Cesare has discovered he’s a steamboat; he’s tooting his horn at passersby (which I would have thought sounds cheerful enough!). Mantissa’s ignoring him. They’re getting through the Broglio:

Cesare drank from the wine bottle. He sang:

Il piove, dolor mia
Ed an’chio piango…

“No,” said Signor Mantissa, waving away the bottle. “No more for me till he arrives.”

V., p. 160.

Mantissa’s resolve on that front doesn’t last long—after a while, he reaches under his chair, “coming up with a new fiasco of wine.” Just then, the third man (“the Gaucho”) arrives:

Biting his thumb irritably at Cesare, Signor Mantissa found a corkscrew; gripped the bottle between his knees, drew the cork. The Gaucho straddled a chair backwards and took a long swallow from the wine bottle.

“Broglio,” Signor Mantissa said, “the finest.”

V., p. 161.

Broglio certainly seems to be some fine stuff. I obtained this one at auction, a measure I haven’t had to resort to since the Lafite Rothschild (though the price wasn’t quite so aristocratically steep this time). It’s a Schiavenza Barolo Broglio from 2014. I found it to be very delicious and easy drinking: dark berries with earthy forest floor notes and well-integrated silky tannins. Could I put back enough bottles to convince myself I’m a steamboat beached on a Florentine bridge? Perhaps!