There is no doubt it. The Chianti is a place with good butchers. Some even excellent. But it is not the only place where you find good butchers. This is to do justice to all those masters in butchery who are not so fortunate as to have a shop in this place.
The Chianti is a noble territory and the success it enjoys belongs to it by right. It is also fortunate because everything that is begun here immediately acquires a sense of exclusiveness, typical of trendy places. Let us enter a famous butcher’s shop. The ‘master butcher’, or in other words, the present butcher complains about being disturbed by a BBC troupe who have just asked permission to shoot a film. But the butcher of Panzano does not appreciate anything impromptu: “You should first have telephoned me, fixed an appointment and I would have been at your disposal. As things are, I feel like an animal in a cage.” Oh yes! Tuscans are inflexible and they know what they want. We understood that this is the welcome we too would have got, so we tried to explain the reason for our visit. He fixed an appointment and we returned the next day.
In the midst of sirloins steaks and salami, lard and small aromatic meat balls, ready to be put into a frying pan, Dario Cecchini, a connoisseur of food and art, revolves around his world like a typhoon who gets rid of everything so as to focus all attention on himself. He serves the elderly customer next door who probably knew him from childhood and who is as witty as he is, beginning a quick-witted verbal duet with her. At the same time he argues on the phone with somebody he doesn’t agree with and, meanwhile, he grasps the doubts of a new customer and answers his tacit question without the former being able to get a word in edgewise. When he ultimately dedicates his attention to us, he becomes an experienced actor. He puts on a panama hat, takes a sharp knife and recites the XXXIII Canto of Dante’s Inferno, that of Conte Ugolino. He has a stentorian voice coming from his diaphragm as is taught in acting schools and he knows it all by heart according to the most classical Tuscan tradition. He is almost as good at it as Benigni, but like him, there are many others, just as talented because in the small Tuscan centers, the pride of belonging to the same origin as the great poet of the Divine Comedy is still alive.
He still has time to talk about cooking and cooking traditions. He lets us into some of his secrets and refers to his website where some of his recipes can be found.
The square of Panzano, surrounded by houses, is small and quiet. We have now made friends with Dario and have discovered a mutual passion for music. The silence is interrupted for a few moments by Confutatis Maledictis from Wolfgang Mozart’s Requiem which our new friend turns up at full volume to welcome us. That music puts us on the same wavelength. We don’t know if a group of tourists, surprised by these notes which thunder like divine justice, feel the same emotion.
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See also:

Chianti Cooking: The Origins, Preserving Chianti Homemade Cooking, Culinary Vacation in Chianti, Chianti Sheep and Pecorino Cheese, The Most Famous Butcher of Chianti in Panzano, Pigs of Chianti – Cinta, San Felice Chef: Antonio Fallini

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