Marco Tozzi
Equally handsome as Marcello Mastroianni, probably even more so, my brother Marco was suddenly forced to leave his dolce vita behind.
When our father died, I was 18 and my brother 26. With his dark skin, brown eyes and thick black hair, he is, even today at sixty, my anchor, the man who has been present all my life and who would never betray me, no matter what. Marco and I couldn’t be more different.
He never travels outside of Italy; I am constantly packing my suitcase. He’s very reserved and has a few friends; I’m gregarious and love parties. He is a pessimist; I emphasize the positive in every situation. Marco, a very private person, gets angry with me when I post information on Facebook about our family business. He is the sole man in a family of women: He has a wife, two daughters, a sister, a niece and a very demanding Italian mother.
My brother Marco is the soul of our farm. He makes olive oil, wine,vinsanto, a dessert wine that demands patience and pride of authorship.
I savor the summer nights when my brother drives me around the countryside on his scooter. If we meet our neighbors, we stop for a little chat without getting off the motorino. Later, when Marco next stops the scooter, I know it is to show me a special view, a gorgeous Tuscan panorama enveloped, beautiful beyond words. And we are indeed silent, Marco smoking his cigarette and I breathing slowly as the dust kicked up by the scooter slowly recedes. I feel like I’m breathing an indelible freedom and love that I can’t find anywhere else in the world.
My brother is the soul of our farm. He makes olive oil, white wine, red wine, and vinsanto, a dessert wine that demands patience and pride of authorship. Marco trims the bushes, cuts the grass in the garden and raises the barnyard animals, including rabbits, horses and sometimes pigs. His secret dream is to breed cows, like his father. As a little boy, Marco followed our dad to the coastal area of southern Tuscany, near Grosseto, the home of a robust breed of white Maremmana cows.
There he observed the endless bargaining of the local farmers, including the usual complaints about the costs required to maintain the size of the herd. Marco is a naturally born buttero, one of those Tuscan cowboys who ride horses and tend cattle. I sometimes tease him that after all the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies he had me watch over the years, I have come to deeply respect his passion. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t mind hearing more mooing around our property.
Marco transformed a group of old farmhouses and land that nobody no longer wanted to cultivate into a beautiful agriturismo, an ideal place for tourists to relax and enjoy an authentic slice of Tuscany, invested in maintaining the property’s historic spirit.
Some of our guests like Gunther and Renate, Michele and Sigrid, Silvia and Henio and Stella and Angelo have been coming back to Terrarossa every year for the past 30 years or so. They are now bona fide friends of the family and frequently sit at the table with us, bringing laughter and appreciation for the incredible food, warmth, inclusion and sense of community.
Riding his old green John Deere, Marco often disappears, only to return with a basket full of freshly picked vegetables or a bottle of wine—a new vintage—from our home-grown winery, soon to be tasted. My brother is a hunter who could charm environmentalists and animal activists. He loves his solitary walks in the woods on foggy, drizzling November days, when he collects mushrooms and berries, sometimes starting a small branch fire to warm himself. He carries his panino con la frittata for breakfast and eats it slowly with the spirit of a survivor. And with that same spirit, he takes out his gun, a ritual from long ago when the hunter was in charge of feeding his family.
Marco transformed a group of old farmhouses and land that nobody wanted to cultivate any longer into a beautiful agriturismo, an ideal place for tourists to relax and enjoy an authentic slice of Tuscany.
Marco worked for a famous Italian bank in Siena. He did his work diligently but never had any desire to make a career in banking. Every day he ran home to sit at the table with his family during his short lunch break and then at 5:00 tended to the obligations of his second and most important job, farming.
Trapped, like millions of other Italians, in the mentality of “safe work,” un lavoro sicuro, Marco made many sacrifices for the future of his family, myself included. I waited this long to express my gratitude to him. I hope he will forgive me if my praise is expressed on the internet. Oops!
Cacciatore (Hunter)
Drawing & Poem by John B. Ryan
