`Big D' means the Dolomites

Italy's Alps are dazzling, domineering, dangerous, daunting, delightful, daring

Author: By Bud Collins, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, December 6, 1998

Page: L13

Section: Travel

They are the Dolomites, suddenly appearing as the road nears Bolzano. Popping up from pine forests in all their Alpine splendor. Loaded with double dips of vanila vanilla on some crests, a confection much to the taste of skiers. Can't you hear Pavarotti lip-synching John Denver on ``Rocky Mountain High''?

``Not really,'' says another passenger, Ron Sampson. ``I'd say it brings to mind -- or ear -- another great tenor, Rene Kollo, in Eugene D'Albert's rarely-performed opera, `Tiefland.' ''

Is that ``Thiefland,'' I wonder. An opera about Ali Baba . . . or Congress? ``No, no. `Tiefland.' German,'' he replies patiently. ``The hero, a shepherd named Pedro, approaches his craggy habitat after some time in the valley, crying out joyously, melodically: `Up to the mountain tops! To life and freedom!'

``Would you like to hear it in the original German?'' A Whiffenpoof emeritus, Sampson is an aria capable guy.

``Not really,'' says friend Aurelio, who is driving. ``But what happens to Pedro?''

``Oh, the usual. He kills the villain, a wolf that has been plaguing the flocks, and gets the girl, Marla.''

``My kind of opera,'' says she, who has been pursued by a few wolves herself.

``They'd understand it around here,'' says Sampson, ``where so much German is spoken and sheep are numerous.''

The Dolomites are her kind of mountains, too. ``Big D -- dazzling, domineering, dangerous, daunting, delightful, daring. Not that high. In the 6 to 6,000- to 7,000-foot neighborhood. But distinctively shaped, divinely sculpted and delineated. The dynamite Dolomites are delicious to the eye.''

``Dishy, as I recall,'' says Sampson.

True enough. This journey to Pedro's mountaintops had begun with a stack of dishes in a small, nondescript Umbrian town, Deruta. Recently, chauffeur Aurelio targeted Deruta on learning that the protean Santa Fe (N.M.) artist Ford Ruthling has allowed a local pottery baron, Ubaldo Grazia, to use his designs. She covets Ruthling dinnerware, and knew she could get it much more reasonably at the factory than in the US.United States.

Amid the stunning array of hand-painted ceramics in a showroom of the aged, dusty Grazia-Deruta plant were some dinner plates emblazoned with imperious, snow-hugged peaks.

``Very cool scene,'' observed Sampson. ``Presumably for hot weather use. Say, a summer pudding. A complete chill-out without air conditioning.''

``If that's how you feel,'' said proprietor Grazia with a smile, ``we've got something for every season.''

``An Amazonian jungle? To warm up a December luncheon in Boston?''

``Ah, Boston? I know it. I have dealt with Shreve's and other fine stores. Well, look around . . . explore,'' suggested the middle-aged Grazia, a leading citizen of his town, not far from Perugia. ``I think you'll be satisfied.

``We -- the Grazias -- have been at this for a while. Twenty-six generations. When my daughter, Chiara, takes over from me, the 27th generation will move into the 21st century. Our family came from near Milan to Deruta in the 15th century because of the excellent clay in this valley. We were the first, but we were not alone for long in high quality. In this town of 7,000, there are 250 ceramics firms.''

He assigned an assistant, Sara Chiucchiu, to lead the way, show us the potters at their wheels, the kilns, the painters, and three crowded floors of finished product.

``There,'' pointed Chiucchiu, ``is some of Mr. Ruthling's work.''

A skilled painter, Simonetta Ventura was studiously copying his drawing of a swarm of bees onto a plate.

Ventura said she would also be duplicating Ruthling's beguiling butterflies on other plates.

I was afraid Sampson would raise a Lieutenant Pinkerton vocal from ``Madame Butterfly,'' but he was engrossed elsewhere.

Grazia said Aurelio's order of both bees and butterflies would arrive in Boston in about six months, and wondered if she wanted some of the snowy mountain plates, too. No thanks.

``They're our wonderful Alps called the Dolomites. Unique. If you don't want to eat off them, you should at least see them, experience them. Just up the road.''

``Andiamo. Let's go!'' Aurelio was quickly at the steering wheel. Having gotten clay out of the way, she was in the mood for mountains. And just up the road, all right, about 300 miles into the northeast zone of Italy, they began to peek at us above the Adige Valley. This territory, known as the Alto Adige or the South Tyrol, depending on your bloodlines, was amputated from Austria as a World War I prize for Italy, a victor in that one. Road signs appear in German and Italian.

Bolzano, a relaxed, clean city, is the springboard to the Dolomites, and the home of Giorgio Grai, renowned as a man about wine -- an oenologist supreme. Thus, he is often praised by his Boston friends, importers Mark and Christopher Tosi, brothers who operate Pastene Co. Mark has said, ``Giorgio is a big hitter, the Mark McGwire of wine-tasting and testing, a vintner himself, a blender and consultant to vintners throughout Europe. You should meet him.''

That's as easy as passing off grape juice as merlot. Known as ``L'ombra'' (the shadow), Grai is even more elusive. He runs, of all things, a no-name ice cream parlor on Piazza Walther, where we luckily, accidentally bump into him and his charming daughter, Katja. She, a schoolteacher, is helping out, making sodas -- ``undoubtedly with a rare bouquet,'' says Sampson.

Once the Boston connection is established, Grai is courtly, helpful. A man of wide international experience, well and conservatively dressed, obviously shrewd, he sends us into the mountains with recommendations. Those include a small, splendid inn, the Parc Hotel Miramonti at Fie, where the peaks are beginning to shoulder the clouds for space.

``You will find the Dolomites different,'' says the hotel's genial, obliging owner, Kersten Muller. ``The shapes are quite spectacular. The roads among them are good, and the walking trails excellent.''

He is right on all counts. Into the jaws and maws of the mousy gray but arrogant limestone guardians of the landscape we plunge -- and are regurgitated on roads that wind like intestines. Up and down. Through passes and gorges. Beside turquoise streams. Over ramparts and across frozen tarns, menacing rock fields and lovely Alpine meadows dotted with balconied stone farmhouses whose second and third stories are of wood.

Jagged and spiky walls here. Assemblages of ridges and towers that seem mysterious amber cities there. A spooky five-fingered hand reaches for us at the next turn. Then a gigantic horned rhino looks impassable. Buttes and ranges that evoke the Himalayas stretch on the horizon. Clusters of pyramids blot out the sky. Rumpled peaks and bouldered beaks demand attention. Haughty heights and stuck-up pinnacles parade vainly. In stony gangs or solo majesty, they are . . ..

``Dramatic,'' says Aurelio, sighing. ``Big D dramatic.''

COLLIN;11/24