The proof arrives in winter when, on some grey Sunday in February, a bottle comes down from the cellar shelf, the cap lifts with a soft sigh, and the whole kitchen fills with the smell of a summer that ended months ago. That bottle was filled on a single day the previous August, when an entire family gave a whole blazing Saturday over to the tomatoes, the day the Italian South calls la giornata della passata, the day of the sauce.
It is one of the last great household rituals to have crossed the ocean intact, and this summer, in backyards from New Jersey to the San Fernando Valley, families whose grandparents and great-grandparents came from the South will keep it once again.
