“Was the miracle of the wine at the wedding in Cana an attack on the health of the people present at the wedding banquet? And could the Madonna who turned to her son to induce him to perform her first miracle ever think of harming the wedding guests left dry?
Franco Maria Ricci, entrusts himself – between irony and provocation – to a rhetorical question to condense the sense of forty years of battles in favor of a conscious and cultural use of wine conducted first by AIS, the Italian Sommelier Association, then by President of FIS, the Italian Sommelier Foundation, and now also from president of the Worldwide Sommelier Association, present in 32 countries around the world.
Let's start with an assumption, what is wine for Franco Maria Ricci? It is above all culture, it is history, it is introspection, it is relationship, it is aspiration for a better world, it is knowledge. It is a philosophy of life before being a drink. And we could go on for a long time, because the meanings that the indefatigable, unstoppable and volcanic Ricci attributes to wine are infinite. But above all it is an engaging passion which, like all passions, pushes you to overcome all obstacles, to dare, and to open up to new paths. And only with this word, "passion", can we explain how he was able to obtain, during his intense career as a sommelier but also as editor of Bibenda, the most prestigious guide of Italian wines, as organizer of national and international food and wine events, at which he invites personalities from the world of politics and entertainment to talk about wine, a journalist, a writer, something that no one had ever done before him.
Such as for example to induce the Italian government to deliver how homage to heads of state and international delegations who come to Italy on an official visit, a box of fine wine and oil representing our Made in Italy, famous throughout the world, instead of old books and prints, as was the custom before, which speak of past eras and not of the present . And what about when at the XI International Forum on the culture of wine dedicated to the theme 'The Value of Time' which was held at the Luiss, in the presence of the Head of State he conferred on the president Mattarella the recognition of 'Honorary Sommelier'? Not to mention how much he led a delegation of wine operators to a papal audience managing even in that circumstance to appoint Pope Francis Honorary Sommelier collecting an extraordinary result, the Pope's thanksgiving speech which remembered with emotion his grandfather winemaker of Piedmontese origins. And that's not all, because we must also remember, for the record, that Honorary Sommelier was also awarded the Prince Charles of England. A country, just to clarify, where the export of Italian wine flies with wings on its feet, plus 38 percent and where more bottles of Prosecco are uncorked than in Italy. In short, a life dedicated to wine after starting from the collaboration with Federico D'Amato, creator of the L'Espresso Restaurant Guide.
In short, the Italy of wine is today an international reality with absolutely respectable figures, everyone talks about wine, sommelier courses are taken by storm, throughout the peninsula there is a flourishing of wine bars. Can we declare ourselves satisfied?
“But not even by chance, Franco Maria Ricci reacts animatedly, we are only at the beginning and we have to recover an atavistic backwardness of the culture of wine in our country not only from the point of view of organoleptic quality but above all, and I repeat above all, of its potential as a driving force of economic opportunities for the nation ”. And here comes the first criticism of the short-sighted policy of a country that sits on a casket of artistic, architectural, food and wine, environmental treasures and leaves it closed without revealing its opportunities for growth and well-being for large segments of the population.
In fact, for Franco Maria Ricci, when the outline of the country of Italy was drawn up seventy years ago, no one reflected on the fact that we had enormous deposits of wealth that could have given us abundant well-being: "I don't blame the politics of the time, because no politician , not even our founding fathers of the Republic could have thought of tomatoes, wine, or the Colosseum as a source of well-being at the time. Of course we were coming out of the war and we had big development problems to deal with immediately. But what happened next is nothing short of criminal. We have 60 percent of the world's artistic heritage and we don't have a Ministry of Tourism that can study policies aimed at promoting the Italian tourist company. ”
If we then move on to wine, the observation is even more bitter and critical. In fact, according to Ricci, if today wine has become a flag for the production of Italian qualitative excellence in Italy, this is certainly not due to politics. “It is thanks rather and, I would say, only to a few courageous entrepreneurs, just to be clear of the caliber of the Antinoris, Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, Gaja, and then other small honest and passionate producers in Piedmont, Veneto, Tuscany and, obviously, of highly respected oenologists – one for all the great Giacomo Tachis – who since the 80s when Italian wine went into crisis on international markets due to the methanol affair have held firm and worked to build, step by step, the redemption of the image – and it is certainly not a matter of aesthetics or marketing but essentially of values and contents – of a wine that has been able to be appreciated throughout the world for its extraordinary qualities. But in this long process of approaching awareness of the culture of wine, let's also include the entry into the field of an army of sommeliers who have explained to the consumer what sensations and values to look for in wine and its pairings”.
The world of wine has therefore been able to play its part – it doesn't get there export for 6 billion euros, you don't get to invoice for 11 and a half billion euros with constantly increasing statistical indexes employing 1,2 million workers – if not working on quality with perseverance and dedication, the same cannot be said of politics which all these years has limited itself to managing the ordinary, never thinking that wine could be invest with the certainty of an economic return. “And this is the sore point – observes Ricci – precisely culture in the broadest sense of the term has been lacking. 'In over 30 years of activity we have worked to ensure that Italy is emancipated in the knowledge of a product that generates a cultural experience of knowledge of Italian biodiversity. Just think that all the vines in the world represent only a small part compared to the grape varieties present in our country, from Piedmont to Sicily. This is for us gold enclosed in the safe of the Italian territory. But we were left alone, no one helped us bring out the positive values of the wine. On the contrary, we have been ignored by the institutions when we have asked in recent years to clear wine from the demonizing concepts of a culture of denial".
Of course, looking back, there is a strong culpable negligence of the political class towards a sector that today represents an important reality in the country's economy. Suffice it to say that only four years ago a Prime Minister felt it his duty to attend the inauguration of Vinitaly in Verona, an international showcase of Made in Italy wine. No one had ever shown up in so many years. “Unfortunately, ours is a country of the blind and mental dwarfs. In all these years we have filled our mouths with big words, but no one thought that the typicality, uniqueness, diversity of our artistic and food and wine heritages would become, in a world that was marching towards homologation, a tool for growth real.
What happened with wine could also have happened with our beaches, our archaeological sites, our landscapes, our cities of art, our truffles or, what do I know, our potatoes, if all this had been considered as an asset on which to base the development of an important sector of the economy and not as a far west land to be plundered, defaced or polluted. Here, if we had considered the real wealth of our territory as an economic potential instead of throwing money into steel mills or certain chemical industries or other automotive adventures, perhaps today we would not have paid a single lira in taxes because tomatoes, oil, pasta, the Colosseum, wine would have given us so much well-being. Let's say we were lucky, but we weren't lucky to catch it".
But perhaps what has harmed wine the most over the years, more than the lack of support and incentive policies, has been its demonization, a condemnation that has been carried around since time immemorial, wine as an escape from reality.
“Yes, there is a lot of talk about the Saturday night massacres. And that irritates me. Because a world is accused, that of wine, which exalts the beauty of life, certainly not death. They are all ready to condemn the abuse of wine, often the cause of accidents, but no one is asking the question of what responsibilities lie behind those massacres, of why young people have not been passionate about wine and the magical world that revolves around it around. That is the non-culture of wine, that thing that has been drunk in an almost derogatory way, it is a liquid thing, not wine, taken as an expedient of alienation, of estrangement, like a joint, which has nothing to do with with wine. And precisely in this lies the maximum responsibility of politics and its institutions. We have done our part to educate the consumer on the joy of wine. But it couldn't be up to us to change the cultural approach to wine in the common mentality.
An example for all: in the state television network – not everyone knows it – one cannot speak of wine in the protected area. Young people don't have to know. It's crazy! And what does this demonization lead to? That wine is experienced by young people as a transgression, an escape from reality, like drugs, with all the satanic charm that this entails. I will never get tired of saying that all this is the result of the most vulgar ignorance. Paradoxically in Italy we have 200.000 people who know wine and appreciate its values and 60 million citizens who ignore it and above all ignore the human, social, anthropological and cultural wealth behind it. If we could spread its culture, make it known, loved, respected, we could ensure that this product does not become a negative fact. And I'm not just saying that. The president of the Italian Society of Adolescent Medicine, Piernicola Garofalo, some time ago launched a direct message to young people regarding food: which should be understood "as something ethical, as a union with nature, sharing and fighting waste, ancient but also current value to be rediscovered and re-evaluated. Not something to be used sometimes even as a self-harming tool ".
And before that, presenting scientific research, he had found that young people who have had their first contact with alcohol in the family environment (and in Italy they are the majority) maintain a much more moderate relationship with alcoholic substances, are less inclined to get drunk, compared to those who made their debut with a group of friends. And he added «Weakening alcohol from its transgressive value by reducing it to a drink which, in the appropriate ways and quantities, can be consumed at home in the presence of the parents, is certainly an effective way for adolescents not to experience it as the prohibition to be violated and therefore induce them, as often happens, to measure their own "adulthood" with their resistance to drinking".
Unfortunately the country is not yet prepared to say aloud that wine is not a negative. On the contrary, those who know wine love it because wine is a complex world in many ways still unknown. And he will never abuse it precisely because his gratification lies in entering slowly and savoring it, in this way of sensations. It is the ability to transmit you a series of emotions that do not arise only from the drink, from the taste, from the hedonistic fact but from a series of things, from its love marriage with food, from its ability to make you perceive the diversity that I am in the country of Italy and in the country of the world, to let you enter and go through the true and proper history of your country, of that locality, it is a moment of sharing with others, it is a desire for abandonment, it is a desire for dialogue, for comparison, for further study is freedom. It's a magic formula that encompasses many worlds that are within us and outside of us. It is a feast of the spirit. It is a smile of intelligence. And all of this takes time, meditation, concentration, slow reading of the thousand messages that wine sends to your brain. The abuse so feared in the face of this world of sensations to which you are introduced is simply a nonsense, a hiatus”.
In France, where the culture of wine is in its blood, wine even enters elementary schools.
"Exact. Four-year-olds are already being told about wine as they are taken with pencil and notebook to visit the gardens of Giverny where Claude Monet's greatest creations were born. At that age they may not know what impressionism is, but they become familiar with the naturalistic models that inspired the great French painter. And all this will represent a great wealth when they grow up and see the water lilies of Giverny in museums. Here the same thing should be done for wine. Knowing where and how grapes are born, knowing how wine comes to life through its processes that have been handed down for centuries, feeling its aromas that refer to the earth, to nature, to the biodiversity of the area where it originates, to retrace the its history, all of this is transformed into a spirituality of fundamental values of life to be shared with others. And again in France, high school students or those who want to become an ophthalmologist, or an engineer or a lawyer can study wine for two years. In Italy we don't even talk about it. Not only that, the most incredible thing is that we don't even talk about it in the five years of hotel management school. And to think that one of the characteristics of wine is precisely that of introducing the person to better enjoy a dish, enhancing its qualities. Yet another all-Italian contradiction.
Well, incomprehensible devilry”.
