Litina

My value is the value of a dowry. Litina is my name, in memory of an aunt who, when it came to striking her marriage pact, had a vineyard added to her bottom drawer. The land is worth something, it doesn’t lose value, it’s tangible. Zia Litina knew nothing about stock market quotations, GDPs and spread. But she knew that those well-tended rows of vines would produce Barbera at every harvest. Now we know it too, and Litina has stayed with us and now represents the three-C logo: C for Cascina, or farmhouse, solid and robust, built on the road with the farmyard protected behind it because that was the custom here in Piedmont: C for Castlèt, the hamlet, the toponym, the name of the place of where we were born and have our roots; C for Costigliole d’Asti, our native village, a centre of life and of memory. One has to have a village, wrote the poet Cesare Pavese, a place one can always go back to. A safe haven, the place where one’s soul is. I travel round the world and I carry with me the logo of the three Cs that intertwine like a corkscrew. And I also take with me that delicate name, Litina, the name of a woman who knew how much well-kept land is worth, how it should be loved like a man, year by year, harvest by harvest.