The Wrath of Grapes : There’s trouble in Tuscany. A proposed dump in one of Italy’s famous wine areas has earned the ire of growers.

For centuries, the gentle, sun-drenched hills around this medieval town in central Italy have been celebrated for their beauty, their tranquility and their splendid wine.

Marveled a grape-fancying bard named Donnoli in 1600:

It seems to kiss you softly as you drink it

and the air bows to its scent.

But today--you guessed it--there’s trouble in Tuscany.

This is the story of the wrath of grapes.

There are many elements to the saga: bitter history, local pride, the environment, modern economics and old-fashioned politics.

What unites them all is garbage.

The province of Siena wants to build a regional dump and garbage treatment plant in these scenic hills, not far from pampered vines that produce Brunello di Montalcino, a high-quality red wine that is a connoisseur’s joy and a regional economic mainstay. (A visitor need not tarry long at one of Montalcino’s oak-beamed wine shops before learning that Frank Sinatra’s favorite Brunello is a ’75 Biondi-Santi, at $180 per.)

Local, regional and national government officials say the plant is necessary, that it would be safe and that its ecological impact would be nil. The mayor of Montalcino thinks local winemakers have shot themselves in the cork with unreasonable protests, foolishly tarnishing the image of their town and the prestige of their wine.

Nonsense, say the growers and local environmentalists: The consequences of absurdity are impossible to foresee and too risky even to consider. In a region famous for its wine and proud of its truffles, honey, olives, mushrooms and ham, there is no room for a garbage dump. Period.

Indeed, if someone tried to build a dump in the middle of the Napa Valley’s Rutherford Bench, the reaction would probably be the same.

“They say there’ll be no damage to the Brunello,” said Francesco Belviso, who works for one of the largest local growers. “Well, how do they know? They say it won’t hurt the water or the vines, whose grapes take their perfume from the sweet wind. Nothing bad will happen. That’s what they say. But. . . .”

In increasing prosperity, the three dozen towns of Siena province generate around 550,000 pounds (275 tons) of garbage a day, about 2.2 pounds per person. It has to go somewhere.

“This will be an industrial establishment; let them put it in an industrial area. Why make a big eyesore in our hills? Why penalize us? Put it in the Siena industrial area; it’s mostly their garbage anyway, and they’d save on travel,” said Roberto Cappelli, founder of a civic anti-dump group called Montalcino Ambiente.

Lovely Siena, the provincial capital, is about 30 miles to the north. It looms over Montalcino in a spectral way.

In the Middle Ages, Montalcino allied with Florence. But after a nasty battle in 1260, when the nearby Arbia River ran red with blood, not wine, Siena took charge. Montalcino subsequently sheltered 242 refugee Sienese nobles in 1555. For its pains, the hilltop town was attacked and besieged for four years by the Medici family, Spain and France. When the people of Montalcino say “Siena” today, the “s” hisses, like a snake.

“Siena says we’re the center of gravity in the province. Why weren’t we the center when it came to building a regional hospital or a superhighway? Then it was all Siena. I’ve lived here 50 years and seen the province build exactly three kilometers of road--that’s all. They remember us when it’s time to dump their garbage,” said Cappelli.

Modern resentment fuels historic memories. Montalcino had a population of about 10,000 after World War II. But it missed out on the postwar boom that made Italy one of the world’s industrial giants. Young people left looking for work in Milan; in Florence, the regional capital; even in Siena.

Today, there are about 5,200 people in the town. Although Montalcino is still far off the main line, their land and their wine have made them prosperous.

On roughly 2,300 select acres, 122 vineyards produce about 3 million bottles of Rosso di Montalcino, a smooth red table wine, and about 2.5 million bottles of Brunello each year. Even in Montalcino, a Rosso sells for about $10, and the youngest of the Brunellos for about twice that. For the best of the Brunellos, the sky’s the limit.

The wine and the plenty of these picturesque hills draw a quiet stream of tourists of the moneyed sort. No tour buses here. And maybe no more tourists at all, townsfolk complain, if Montalcino is fouled by a dump.

“It is a question of image. That has value. We have spent millions to improve, protect and promote the Brunello. Why destroy it? We risk not only damage to our wine, but also to our image and our quality of life,” complained Belviso.

None of it is in jeopardy, according to planners in Siena, backed by Environment Minister Giorgio Ruffolo in Rome, who says the proposed facility, called Monte Landi, poses no risk to the region or its wine.

After local protests, officials say, the size of the plant has been slashed by two-thirds. It will receive only household waste, no industrial or hospital garbage or toxic material.

The Monte Landi plant is one of two regional facilities approved by provincial officials in February. About 200 tons of garbage daily will be treated at the plant, much of it converted into compost for agriculture.

At Montalcino’s city hall, Mayor Mauro Guerrini, an elementary school principal with shoulder-length gray locks, is perched uncomfortably at the garbage storm center.

The mayor is a Communist, one of 11 on Montalcino’s 20-member City Council. Montalcino sits in Italy’s Red Belt, amid other towns and cities--like Siena itself--that vote so methodically that people sometimes joke that they would have been communist since Roman times if Marx had been born a bit earlier.

It would be tempting but wrong to think of the Montalcino controversy as a class struggle: capitalist growers against communist townsfolk.

Although environmentalists note that one Communist city councilor who voted to approve the dump later joined a growers’ tractor protest drive to Siena against it, what is also true is that a majority of the Brunello growers are also communists.

“The opposition is disingenuous. I don’t know what they really want. When we began, it was a fight between nature and pollution, but we won that battle,” said the mayor, smoke from his cheroot clawing at a stained poster behind his head that reads: “Smoking Kills.”

It was hard-fought municipal negotiation that scaled down the size of the dump and minimized the nature of the waste it will receive, Guerrini said. For Montalcino to opt out would be to break faith with the rest of the municipalities in the province, which also face uncomfortable demands on behalf of the common good.

Although no dump at all would be best, he said, the one that is coming “is, all things considered, an ecological project. It will not pollute. It’s not a nuclear plant. Tourists will come and never even see it.

“I think the growers are committing economic suicide with their protests. They’ve damaged us and themselves even before the plan becomes a reality. You don’t need a reality to destroy an image,” the mayor of Montalcino said, urging: “Don’t defend the mayor. Defend the Brunello.”

For their part, the Brunello’s grower-defenders are so furious with Montalcino’s mayor and with Siena that they talk of seceding to join neighboring Grosseto province.

The abrasive encounter of land and modern man’s demands on it is an oft-told tale these days in an Italy that is at once agricultural, industrial and as waste-producing as any other rich society.

Something’s got to give, notes Montalcino’s beleaguered mayor. Farther to the north, he says, the scenic Chianti wine countryside between Siena and Florence already cohabits peaceably with a dump--and an incinerator.