Sciacchetrà (pronounced shah/keh/TRAH; try it with biscotti)

Sciacchetrà (pronounced shah/keh/TRAH; try it with biscotti)

We’ve often been asked (mostly by people not familiar with obscure, hard to get, Northern Italian, non-Tuscan wines): “Ummm, where does the name of your film come from?” Or, “What’s it called? Chaka Khan?”


I have to admit, at first, I remembered how to pronounce Sciacchetrà using Chaka Khan as a word association tool. (Sharon’s Italian is much better than mine, so she needed no such tool!)

Sciacchetrà isn’t a classically “Italian” sounding word. But it is the name of the classic, rare, prized sweet Italian dessert wine, made from the best white grapes that grow in the higher elevations of the Cinque Terre. These grapes are dried in the sun on racks – right up on the rooftops – before pressing. In the local dialect, it means, “press it and forget about it for a long while.”

References to Sciacchetrà can be found all the way back to Pompei. If you ever have the opportunity to taste some, savor it. It is spectacular. And, try it with biscotti. Thanks to whyGo ITALY (http://www.italylogue.com/cinque-terre) for the pronunciation and the biscotti reference!

Our apologies if you now have the Chaka Khan song “I Feel For You” stuck in your head…

Salute!

Krista