When it comes to sangratino, the devil is in the details

I don’t know what the priests were pouring when I was an altar boy, but it wasn’t a nice Montefalco sangratino. I would have remembered that since I usually had a toot or two before Mass.

My favorite sangratino is called Scacciadiavoli, which means “chasing the devil away.” Don’t you love that? It’s worth drinking just for the name but it’s also awfully damn good. The Scacciadiavoli estate, which might be the most beautiful in all of Umbria, is in a little village not far from Montefalco.

There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about how Scacciadiavoli got its name: Seems back in the Middle Ages, a local woman was possessed by the devil. Back then this could be a real problem, leading to some rather nasty medieval solutions like being flayed and disemboweled. But there was this wealthy noble man from Montefalco, who was a pretty good guy, and he decided to see if he couldn’t personally exorcise the devil. Evidently the treatment required some serious one-on-one time alone in his chambers.

And, hallelujah, it worked. No one was really quite sure what he did to rid the devil in Mrs. Jones, but the most prominent theory was that he had sex with her. Because any Italian worth his D&G sunglasses will tell you that sex is a good way to clear the mind. 

The cure took. But evidently every once in awhile Mrs. Jones would feel that ol’ devil in her bones again and ask her husband’s permission to visit the noble man for a little refresher exorcism. Which he always granted. Because when she came home, not only was she calmer and happier but she always brought a nice bottle of sangratino with her as a gift from the noble man to her husband. And the husband started calling this wine “scacciadiavoli” in honor of the noble man’s prodigious gift.

This went on for a number of years. Until the woman got pregnant. Which seemed a little odd to everyone in the village since her husband was long known to be impotent. Anyway, the Scacciadiavoli vineyards are still there, up in the Umbrian hills near a little village called Bastardo. Nobody is quite sure how the village got its name. But, as you can imagine, there are stories.