Enoteca 3/4 da Tartufo

The enoteca's story goes back to the second half of the 1700s, when these walls housed an inn. It stood on Via Belfiore, the road that leaves San Donato as a mule track, climbs towards the mountains, crosses them and comes down into Abruzzo. It was a trade route between San Donato and Abruzzo, travelled in both directions, and one of the most important commercial arteries of the valley: goods, deals and news all passed this way.

Before setting off, travellers stopped here for something to eat and drink: it was the last inn before the mountain. The inn was so well known that the street took its name: before it became Via Belfiore, it was called Via della Locanda, Inn Street.

The mule track is still there: you can't drive it, but you can walk it, and today it belongs to hikers.

The inn carried on like this until the Second World War. After the war it became one of San Donato's 48 cantine.

Back then every neighbourhood had its own baker, its own butcher and, of course, its own cantina. That's where husbands stopped «just for one glass», and it was often up to their wives to come and fetch them.

This was Cecuriglie's cantina, one of the village's wine taverns.

Then the cantina closes too. The place changes hands again and again and, one owner after another, stops being a business altogether. For years, nobody pours a glass in here.