Slow Food Presidia in a Roman Cistern Under Trastevere

Two things make this different from the other tastings in the quarter, and both are specific. The room is a Roman cistern from the 1st century, restored and turned into a cellar, under an 18th-century building in Trastevere. Original Roman marble is set into the walls. Old winemaking tools and furniture stand on the wooden shelving. It is genuinely underground and genuinely ancient, not a vaulted basement with a story attached. The food is chosen from Slow Food presidia. That is a defined list, not a marketing phrase: the presidia are specific products from specific small producers, protected because they were close to disappearing, and a producer is either on the list or is not. What you taste therefore comes with a traceable provenance rather than an adjective. The wines are matched to them and poured by staff who explain where each thing comes from and why the tradition behind it survived. Trastevere, on the west bank, is a maze of curving alleys and small squares, and the people who live there hold that theirs is the only real Rome. This cellar sits under one of those alleys. The address is Via dell'Arco di San Callisto 19/20, inside the Residenza San Calisto. Look for the red canopy and ring the bell at the entrance.