A boccalino is a small ceramic vessel shaped like a little jug. Whatever its origin, it is used as a drinking vessel in the areas around the Veltlin. It is for the enjoyment of red wine, like the Veltliner, of course. We have twenty-four of then, one set in blue and another in a red pattern on white base. The pattern is a sort of folkish design, like fern leaves wrapping themselves around the vessel. I'm telling you all this because I do not expect you to know about it. This is not part of a standard liberal arts education hereabouts, nor is it what one would seek out when traveling Europe. Guide books and booked tours don't get you there. I had the advantage to have lived thereabouts for almost thirty years, so it is part of my mother's milk.
The way we got two dozen of those is common. One day, coming home from work in NJ, I was received at the door by Tiiu, my beloved, then my wife of about four years. She wore a puzzled look on her face which noticeably contrasted with the usual glee she displayed on my return home in those days. She also began to hum and haw during the early stages of our reunion that evening, until I finally received my prompts and asked "what's the matter" perhaps even adding 'my love' or something to that effect but I do not remember things that clearly after forty five years. She led me into the family room where she pointed to a shipping box, open, with wrapping materials flowing about and said "Look!" As I looked and searched the packaging I came across a boccalino and, holding it up, exclaimed, "A boccalino, how nice! Mims (my mother's nick name) must have sent us these. Did she? How lovely! Let's open a bottle of Chianti (the closest thing to Veltliner one could find then and there) and try them. Tiiu's puzzled look increased. "Why," she asked, "would your mother send us twelve of those little creamers? And how do you relate this to opening a bottle of wine?"
Some years later, we were living in Switzerland then, Lulu came visiting and we took a trip up to Bivio on the Julier Pass. We stayed in the Post Hotel there, which I "knew" from the years before the war, when our family used to travel south for Easter to visit my dad's lather in Desenzano, Italy, on the south end of the Lago di Garda. Our plan then was for Lulu and me to hike across the mountains, south to the shores of the Silvaplana Lake, where Tiiu would pick us up, having driven the car over the pass into the Veltlin, bringing Iivo and Kaarin along. Bivio is a small place on the way up the pass when you come from the north. It is on a sort of a large shelf just before you get into the serpentine that leads up to the the mountain ridge and back down the south slope to St. Moritz. We always used split our trips south at that point. The owner of the hotel had a son of our age, that is just between Lulu and me, and we always had a memorable time playing outside at the back of the hotel. There was a little brook babbling down the rock-strewn pastures and it made a beautiful place to build dams and cause floods and get all wet and dirty. One visit we constructed a little waterwheel from twigs and scrap wood and mounted it of small rocks in the course of the brook and watched it turn in the bubbling flow of the clear water that we would unhesitatingly drink while playing, dipping our faces right down into the chill.
During this visit that I am talking about, some thirty years after the events I just related, Iivo and Kaarin were asleep in their beds upstairs, the three of us sat in the dining room of that hotel after a wonderful dinner of Bündnerfleish (the air-dried beef of the Grisons), dark, crusty bread, sweet, fresh butter, and Veltliner, which we drew from a large barrel set into the wall of the dining room, into our boccalini. It was an honor system maintained by the hotel management and we kept tabs with a ballpoint pen on a coaster so we would not short the house. We saw our host come in and greet his guests and eventually he made his way to our table, introduced himself, and said to me, "I noticed your name in the registration book and it looks familiar. Can you give me some help in finding if we have met before?" Well, making the story short, he was the son of the owner who had hosted us before the war, the same boy we had had so much fun with some thirty years ago.
You see, life is full of discovery, and if you keep your eyes closed, you miss a lot of good stuff. So, sitting down in the dining room, I explained 'boccalino vs. creamer', opened a bottle of Chianti and reminisced with Tiiu, and we spent yet another a delightfully memorable evening together.
Later, Mims sent us another dozen, having forgotten that we already had a fair share of those treasures, and they all became part of our household, traveled with us from NJ to Switzerland and down to VA and up to VT and over to MA and back down to NC where they are now, with hardly ever any use for them except stirring memories.
Today, I prepared my dinner and decided to have my wine from one of those boccalini. Yesterday I used a red one. Today it is a blue one. The wine I have is neither Veltliner nor is it Chianti. There was a bottle of Rex Goliath Pinot Noir in the rack and it serves well. After cooking and dinner and all this reminiscing and writing, it is still more than half full. Who cares it is a 1.5 liter bottle? Memories - that's all.
