One thing I appreciate looking again at Shadow Ticket is how much of the young Pynchon is still visible. Of course, sixty-plus years after V., his slow-learning path has taken him worlds beyond that first postmodern doorstep. He wields a relaxed mastery these days. But plenty of little signatures of his style have stuck around for the ride. For my purposes, I’m very glad to keep seeing him dropping those niche wine grapes. Back in V., we had Broglio and Rufina, among others. In Shadow Ticket, he’s still at it, offering up a Gaglioppo for our readerly delectation.

I wonder what process these oenological details emerge from. Does Pynchon just know all these wines? Did he already possess an encyclopaedic head for vineyards as a 20-something writing V.? You’d be foolish to put it past him, but it may be also that he’s pulling from some kind of wine atlas, like he did with that Baedeker. If so, I’d like to imagine it’s the same well-thumbed and wine-stained volume he’s been plucking Hochheimer and Bucelas and Sassicaia from all these years.

Your own intel on this particular grape can come from right here. Gaglioppo is the primary grape of the Calabria region in Southern Italy, and makes an easy-going light red. My bottle is a Scala Cirò Rosso Classico Superiore from 2021. It’s got a bit of a funky aroma, but a tasty straightforward palate of red berries with a bit of tannic grip. Comes across to me like a spicier pinot noir.

In Shadow Ticket, our Gaglioppo is in the glass of a mafioso. Chapter 7:

Though Hicks had been still hoping for the Villa Venice, they didn’t get much further that night than one of the no-name drink-and-dance joints out northwest, which was also where and how he finally got the official word about Don Peppino Infernacci, something Lino Trapanese has been hinting around about for the better part of a year now. The minute April heads for the ladies’ toilet, Don Peppino’s chief enforcer, Angie “Vumvum” Voltaggio, an infrequent shaver in a glossy suit known for a readiness to bring out his “ukulele” on any pretext and spray a pattern, here tonight hosting a small party of two dozen, blaming his loosened tongue on the Gaglioppo, blurts out what’s news to nobody, that April Randazzo is in fact the promised bride of evil, known locally as Don Peppino—and not only publicly dizzy about but actually preparing at any moment to go running off with her abductor.

Shadow Ticket, p. 47.

Mafioso was a bit imprecise, actually. Don Peppino is actually an ‘ndranghetista, or a member of the ‘Ndrangheta, a Calabrian-originating crime syndicate completely distinct from the classic Cosa Nostra mafia. It makes sense, then, that his henchmen drink Gaglioppo—it’s the native grape of their home region. Presumably Pynchon lifted this detail straight from his 1950 edition of the Encyclopaedia of Criminal Organisations and Their Preferred Wines.