Vino sfuso doesn’t translate easily into English. Technically it would be rendered “diffuse wine,” which makes little sense. “Loose wine” makes it sound as if it has escaped its confinement, or is of low morals. “Bulk wine” indicates too much of it. Perhaps you’ll best get the picture if I call it unbottled wine.
During the two periods I lived in Rome, first as a seminarian, then as Cardinal Baum’s secretary, I became a devotee of Roman vino sfuso. You may be surprised to learn it was not red wine, like in Tuscany, but white; actually it was a rich straw-golden color, made from the grapes grown for millennia in the nearby Alban hills.
The wine was served in pitchers or carafes that were filled and refilled from a barrel in a corner of the restaurant closest the door. The location was consistent from restaurant to restaurant because the barrels were filled by a hose that more resembled surgical tubing than the garden variety and was extended from the wine truck that stopped daily just outside in the street. The trucks were whimsical and almost toylike both in their size - they had to be short and narrow enough to navigate the narrow Roman streets - and in their configuration, with two double rows of wooden barrels on the flat bed behind the tiny upright cab, as if someone had told an Italian child to design a truck to carry wine, or as if they had simply replaced the horses that drew the wine carts for centuries with a cab-over diesel motor.
The wine itself was a marvelous substance that accompanied perfectly and enhanced most every food. It was distinctly rustic in quality, almost raw, so one would not readily drink it by itself; but the acidity helped it stand well with any food acidic with tomatoes or rich with oil or cheese, which covers most pasta sauces. It was ideal with veal, chicken, fish, and seafood, but also stood up well even to beef, though Romans eat relatively little of that. Every meal revealed another feature of this glorious beverage.
I write of it in the past tense, because it has nearly disappeared from Roman tables. EU regulations have taken much of the best fun out of Italian dining, and put table wine into bottles. It’s a shame; that stuff is thin gruel, without the robustness that made vino sfuso so versatile. In this country you can buy a bottle of Frascati, which is white wine from the Alban hills, but it’s indiscernible from a pale insipid sipping wine like cocktail party pinot grigio.
The first of the signs worked by our Lord was at the wedding in Cana, where he changed water into superb vino sfuso. This passage of the Holy Gospel is one of my very favorites not only because of the substance of Christ’s gift, but because it has revealed to me the nature of all Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospels.
This is my favorite Gospel passage to read at weddings, especially convalidations, that is, when Catholics who have married outside the Church bring that relationship into full sacramental glory. Having worked closely with each of these couples as they came to this point, I know them and understand something of the particular nature of their relationship that is distinct from every other marriage. When I then address the homily to the two of them, each time, for each couple, a new facet of this Gospel and this Divine miracle reveals itself to me, and one hopes to them. It is like a new pairing that reveals another quality of the same rich, versatile wine.
There are many passages like this that occur frequently at funerals as well as weddings, times when the distinct and different realities of each human situation are set in high relief, like strong and subtle flavors of a particular dish. Served next to this complex reality, the Gospel reveals nuances that have always been present but gone unnoticed. These nuances once discovered are not lost, but remain and continue to enhance the experience of drinking deeply from the wellspring of God’s self-revelation in Christ and in the Sacred Scriptures.
One need not be in Holy Orders nor preach in order to taste the many flavors and qualities of God’s Holy Word written for us. Each of us has a variety of circumstance and situation that we can ourselves bring to the light of the Word, and find in that pairing a new delight and new refreshment that we never lose but which will continue to enhance our understanding and enjoyment of the smorgasbord of God’s saving action in or lives and for our joy.
Each time we take up the Sacred Scripture for help or solace or enlightenment, we learn how the Word of God is like vino sfuso, raising our eyebrows and our eyes in wonder and delight like the steward at the wedding feast of Cana, and saying: “you have kept the good wine until now.”
Monsignor Smith
