Antica Bottega del Vino

This guide to Antica Bottega del Vino in Verona traces five centuries of a room that began as an inn called Scudo di Francia, passed through an Austrian tavern and the Sterzi brothers' shop, and was sold in 1890 to a growers' cooperative from Soave. It follows the gamble every owner made, that people would keep coming for the wine rather than the food, up to the eleven Amarone winemaking families who bought the place in 2010 to keep its cellar intact. Daniele Nalin later hand-painted the two hundred pages of the current wine list.