Mercato di Mezzo, Bologna. It’s calm and careful, gustatory,
as a Sunday evening of couples promenade with late night kids in tow,
delighted as mum and dad lift a glass to toast some fortune or other (but the laughter will be stilled when the reveille is called in the morning), and then
I spot a chef grilling, the word calamari pinned somewhere on the stall, followed by the fairground-tough
aromatics of fried food elbowing their way through the elegant air, calamari,
prawns, gloved in batter, crisp and salty and dotted with lemon juice. I order
and then grab a table and look across and see the sign for Birra Baladin. I
keep an eye on my food and order a glass of Super Bitter, as far from a
traditional bitter as can be. The imperious wave of a conductor (Toscanini
rather than the metronomic tick-tock of von Karajan thank god) brings the scent
of deep, rugged, sensual orange marmalade to the nose alongside a spear thrust
into the side of bitterness; almond, marzipan and sweetness on the palate start
their descent to be cut off by an assertive bitterness, sticky almost, a big
beer that beams in with a missile-like accuracy on the salty, citrus, crunchy, still briny impact of the
seafood. As I crunch and sip, I sift through the weekend and recall the
bitterness of White Dog’s American Pale Ale at Saturday’s farmers’ market,
beneficially bitter, robust and yet mellow. Then I remember Friday night and
the barman (and brewer) in Birra Cerqua, where at the back of the small bar there
stands a kit of Italian-built stainless steel, while fermenting vessels cower behind opaque glass panels to my right (I told you it was narrow). A glass of
Q-Ale, made with German malt and English hops I am told. It is pale gold, hazy,
bittersweet and refreshing. ‘We brew on Sundays.’ Another result of this work
is the rye beer, earthy and erudite. Back to Sunday, the day when the brewers of Cerqua are busy, the dominant vibe of Mercato di Mezzo as I look about are glasses being raised, the aromatics of fried fish,
the deep undercover agents of cured meat and aged cheese and the empty,
thin-sounding, TB-cough of an empty coffee carton as it rolls off on the empty
floor. Later on, it’s time for Green River, another one room bar, a place that
could have been a butchers’ (yet there is no smell of blood in the air), or
perhaps it was a tailor’s, where each morning a mournful man washed the portico-shaded
front of his shop with the dedicatory air of a penitent, or perhaps it was just
another bar. Green Petrol from Brewfist, a Black IPA, smooth, robust,
roastiness leashed, citrus flutters amongst the darkness, an ideal metaphor for
Bologna, where the long dead cohabit with the restless living and the beer list just keeps improving.
Bologna. Ambling up from the
station, the town centre a target. Two friends embrace on a crossing, while a
patient taxi driver waits — the amiable anarchy of Bologna. A middle aged man
cycles by whistling accompanied by the staccato clack on heels on the marble
floor as a woman rushes by — late for her train perhaps? Sound is all around.
Conversations, melodic highs and lows, echoing beneath the high ceiling
porticoes, dashed and splashed with the unsigned frescoes of the city’s
artists. In the old city centre, Osteria del Sole — bring your own Mortadella
and bread and cheese and order a glass of Theresianer Pils and listen to people
talk: students discuss ways in which the world can be saved; couples pick at
each others’ lunches, the intimacy of familiarity; the Goth/rock chick barmaid
hands out a chopping board and knife; original artworks by patrons can be seen
rolled out on the walls; the chatter, the clink of the glasses, the debates,
the integration, the deliberation, the lack of the iPad.
Later that day, a stroll out
of the centre into the Birroteca La Tana del Luppolo (which apparently
translates as Lair of Hops), small, a shop that is now a bar, to be found in a
precinct like area. Above the wooden bar, the chiselled, hewed, carved, birthed
from the earth wooden bar, an empty barrel hangs, its fangs forever drawn, a
signifier that beer is the diet here. Two dogs engage in the corner, a small
funny bundle of pup fur and a Dachshund cross. Blanche des Neiges, Birrifico
Italiano Cinnamon Bitter and La Rulles Estivale on draught while lots of
bottles hover in the fridges. Big open window, the street passes by and I’m
told it was a home brew shop before it went into selling beer at the bar. And
to come there is a story that includes BrewDog, Flying Dog, La Senne, St
Feuillien, Rochefort, Thornbridge and Brewfist who have been or will be turning up
and the following night Agostino from Birrifico Italiano will be there as well.
And then sitting there with my glass of Cinnamon Bitter I’m thinking about how
during the day I visited the place where the canal that was part of the network
that used to vein its way through Bologna emerges into daylight on Via
Malcontenti, a hidden part of the city, a place where fast flowing waters cut
through a frayed, crumbling, naked part of old Bologna before vanishing beneath
another street and no one knows of its existence — and I think how like this subterranean network the beer
culture of Bologna is. And I like that.
I’m in the middle of Bologna and on the top floor of
the Ambassadors building at Librarie Coop, which advertises itself as a library but also seems to sell books; whatever its function it’s a place that seems like a pretty decent bookstore (think Barnes & Noble) — however on the top floor of the building there are shelves and shelves of beer,
some of which I am familiar with in the UK, Belgium and the US, others are the
aristocrats of the Italian beer scene. It’s pretty cool. The whole building is in what was once a church and there
are the remains of the nave (perhaps it’s the nave or maybe I’ve lapsed on the
lapse as I’m rather hazy on church architecture) at the end of one mighty wall.
This space also did time as a porn theatre but now it’s only right that it’s
dispensing all sorts of knowledge over three floors with the three tiered book
store, a café and artisanal foods on the second floor and right at the top the
bar and accompanying restaurant (the eating and drinking places going under the
name of EatItaly), where are there beers that make me warm and fuzzy and rather
glad I am where I am. I order a draft Forst Sixtus, a review of which I had
edited in 1001 (an Italian copy of which I found downstairs); it’s a doppelbock
that I had always wanted to try — I like its toasty, chocolaty character and a
finish of (more toastiness) dryness. I then ordered a glass of the same
brewery’s Heller Bock, pale and strong, fragrant and glasslike in its fragile
dose of malt sweetness and hop bitterness. There is a clear explanation of the
beers on draught on the wall, colour, strength, ingredients etc, and I just
feel that this is so right — it’s a gratifying experience, a flying buttress of
gastronomic joy that combines books and beer (and wine as well) in a way
that only a book-burning teetotaller with no room in their heart for good food
could turn their face against. As I watch the woman who served me my glass of
Sixtus bend her elbow to the cutting, the sawing into chunks, of the evening’s
bread for the diners to come, I was aware that my glass was empty. And waited until she had finished. Another
please. Beer and books: would it be too much to ask for this to catch on in the
UK?
