Many years ago, I bought a house in the Garfagnana, where we still go every summer. The first time we _ 21 _ there, we heard the chug chug-chug of a motorbike _ 22 _ its way down the hill toward us. It was _ 23 _ called Mario, coming to _ 24 _ us a box containing some tomatoes and a bottle of wine. It was a very nice _ 25 _ for him to make. But when we looked at the tomatoes, we were _ 26 _ because they were so misshapen: not at all like the nice, round, _ 27 _ things you get in a supermarket. And the wine was cloudy, in a funny old bottle with no label (标签) on it. These can’t be any _ 28 _ , we thought. But we were _ 29 _ his kindness, so we _ 30 _ them.

What we discovered is that it’s 31 _ to judge what you eat only by its 32. Those tomatoes had _ 33 _ that reminded me of the ones my uncle used to grow when I was a child. Nowadays supermarket tomatoes _ 34 _ perfect but taste of water. Nobody’s going to have a _ 35 _ memory of those. It’s a surprise they haven’t managed to grow square ones so that they can _ 36 _ them easily. Mario’s wine may have been cloudy and come out of an old bottle, but it was _ 37 _ .

It’s good to eat things at the correct time, when they’re _ 38 _ , and as close as possible to where they were _ 39 _ . What Mario had _ 40 _ us was the taste of the Garfagnana.