There was one merenda we, kids, loved that someone could have considered… controversial? Tuscany is the land of good wine, and among our various tasty merende (plural) was pane, vino e zucchero, bread, wine and sugar.

A drizzle of red wine was poured over slices of freshly baked bread, then covered with a thin coat of sugar.

Although we devoured merende of pane vino e zucchero at a single digit age, and we grew up with wine on the table at every meal, my siblings and I (five of us) never had a problem with alcohol. Wine wasn’t a forbidden fruit, which made it not interesting. Just saying…

In fact, although there are producers of great wines in our immediate family, I didn’t start to drink it until my mid twenties, when my father in law, a true connoisseur and collector, would take me into his cellar to choose the wine for the meal our family was about to share. Far from being an expert, at least I now know what I like or don’t. As a Tuscan D.O.C., I favor red wine!

Fun fact of the Fun fact

My in laws lived in Switzerland where by law all homes were required to have a ‘bunker’ in the basement: a windowless room with cement walls and a ‘safe like’ metal door. Also by law, people were required to store non perishable food and basic necessities in the bunker, to be able to survive for a while in case of a nuclear attack.

My in laws’ bunker was furnished with stacks of shelves on all walls. One wall stored what was required by law. The other three walls were my father in law’s cellar, and contained a collection of a couple of hundreds bottles of wine from all over the planet. The way my father in law looked at it was, “If we have to die we’ll die happy!”