Wine
Cesare made wine every fall as did his brother Attilio and many other relatives and friends who lived in the area. Wine was a staple of socializing. During large family gatherings, they would bring their homemade wine to compare and critique. Cesare got his grapes from a local importer not far from where he lived. They came in wooden crates. “You could always tell if it was wine season because at the end of the driveway, people would have the leftover wooden grape boxes put out in their garbage,” said John. Franco remembered, “We’d be enlisted to help out crushing. When I was younger my dad didn’t have a press or a chopper for the grapes, so he’d disinfect the “wellies” and we’d stomp around in our boots.” Eventually, Cesare acquired a press which Irene was not a fan of. “We had a wine press in the garage, which I hated because it attracted all the wasps and I was afraid of them. I never wanted to go in the garage because they would be all over the place,” she remembered. Cesare made both red and white wine. He never labelled his bottles so no one ever knew exactly what they were drinking, only that it was either red or white. “It was pretty strong so I could never drink it,” said Irene. “I’d have to water it down with ginger ale.” Cesare never added yeast during the fermentation process. He relied on the natural yeast of the grapes, so the quality of his wine, year to year, was highly variable. He even had some batches that were unintentionally effervescent.
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Each batch was large — a couple hundred bottles. They were aged in three large open-top wooden barrels that had been made by Attilio, who was a ‘cooper’ (traditional barrel-maker). He was the barrel-maker for the whole extended family. Wine was stored in the basement in a cupboard under the stairs. That’s where it fermented in the demijohns and where it was stored after bottling.
Franco remembered his father drinking out of little four ounce tumblers. “He’d finish a glass then he’d put the bottle away. He’d have a piece of bread and cheese for lunch or something and some wine. It’s often what he would do. Throughout a typical day, he would consume a bottle of wine, more if company happened to drop by.”
School Years
All the Ferrari children went to General Brock Elementary, a short walk up Chestnut Crescent from their home. The high school was WA Porter Collegiate Institute, a.k.a. WAPCI, which is now SATEC. To get to the high school, the kids had to walk 15 to 20 minutes through the hydro right-ofway, across a railway track, and past a horse barn, which was eventually replaced with a shopping mall. They didn’t take the bus because it was too expensive.
Another time I decided to make pasta. Mother probably had sauce in the fridge or something. I didn’t know how much to make so I just dumped a whole five pound package in the pot and then the water disappeared. ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?! It’s growing.’ I went next door to my aunt and said, ‘Help, help. The monster is growing out of the pot!’”
When he was still in primary school, as the oldest, Franco was responsible for making food at lunch. “Creamed corn on toast was the fallback position because all I had to do was open a can and heat it,” he remembered. Bologna sandwiches were another frequent option. Franco was famous for his impossibly large Dagwood sandwiches. There were a few near disasters, Franco recalled. “I tried making some chips once and didn’t realize I was supposed to dry them a bit before I threw them in the hot oil. You can imagine what happened. The pot started frothing over and almost started a fire.
General Brock School
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