The 2004, the year which has just passed, ended with a grave loss for the world of Italian wine and - with no fear of doubt - for the whole world of wine. The last November 29th, in Bergamo - the city where he lived - at 78 has passed away Luigi Veronelli. The sad news deeply shocked the world of enology and with him we all lose the greatest - and the first - enogastronomical critic and divulger of our times. Whoever has been into wine for at least once in his or her life, knew who Luigi Veronelli was and the precious work he did for almost fifty years in favor of Italian wine, olive oil, the revaluation of agricultural resources and the country world. Luigi Veronelli - whose friends were used to call him “Gino” - has always tenaciously fought and with determination in favor of wine and against its homologation. For him wine - and it was enough to look at him with a glass of wine in his hands to understand this - has always been a dear and loyal friend, a friend to respect and to defend against the endless attempts of speculation.

 Whoever works in the wine business, as well as any lover of the beverage of Bacchus, knows that without his work and his revolutionary and pioneer ideas, the world of Italian wine would not be today what it is. Luigi Veronelli had the courage and the intuition of awakening the world of Italian enogastronomy from its long and deprecable sleeping, therefore giving back to Italy the conscience and cultural identity of its wine and foods, while promoting - the first one in our country - the long and hard way that from quantity led to quality. Luigi Veronelli was the first one to convince Italian wine producers - since 1960's - that great wines born in the vineyard. He was the first one who insisted on the absolute need of selecting grapes in the vineyard, to introduce the importance of terroir, to emphasize the potentials and differences of each vineyards and of each cru. He was the first one to believe Italian wine could improve in order to reach exceptional levels of quality: an idea on which - at those times - no one dared to believe and could not understand. All that in 1960's and 1970's, when quantity still was the main goal of Italian enology and quality was seen as an utopia. Luigi Veronelli has been a great pioneer.

 Moreover, he was a pioneer in the information and in the way of writing about wine: whoever is in the enogastronomy press and write about wine knows he or she owes to Luigi Veronelli the gratitude granted to a master. His many books, the countless articles published in journals and magazines, have taught anyone who had the pleasure to read them: his words have introduced to the world of wine countless lovers. His lexicon and his way of writing about wine, in his absolutely personal style, are now part of the description of wine and criticism parlance. Among the most famous ones it is impossible not to mention “meditation wine” and “fable wine”. With the loss of Luigi Veronelli we lost the fundamental and historical pillar for anyone writing about wine, an important reference point who taught anyone and strongly contributed to the spreading of enogastronomical press and information.

 Luigi Veronelli was born in Milan on February 2nd, 1926 and at about 25 he discovered his passion for the world of enogastronomy, at 30 he is the editor of “Il Gastronomo” (The Gastronomer) a philosophical-gastronomical magazine. The style he uses for writing about the many subjects - polemical and provocative - soon allowed him to notoriety and he wrote many books either alone or in collaboration with others. Luigi Veronelli was also a very popular TV personage in the 1960's and 1970's: unforgettable is the TV show “A tavola alle sette” together with Ave Ninchi, the great Italian actress too rapidly forgotten and that should be more frequently remembered. He has always been a strenuous opposer of the Italian DOC system - in which he saw a system in favor of commercial and industrial wineries - and he used to say that «the worst wine of a peasant is better than the best industrial wine». His last “battles” were in favor of Communal Denominations for food resources and source price as well as supporting the revaluation of olive oil production.

 His ideas - always tenaciously supported with determination - have had the “fault” of being told too early in respect of times, in moments in which no one could understand them, maybe because of the incapacity of looking beyond the horizon and the will to change things. Despite his ideas have been source of problems - even with law - and for which he found many friends, as well as many enemies, today, after tens of years, we know Luigi Veronelli was right. Italian wine owes much of its success in the world to his intuitions and to the cultural and enological revolution of which he indisputably was pioneer and leader. And the effects are still visible today even after more than thirty years. We all who love wine owe something to Luigi Veronelli. He was the first one to teach us how to “talk” and “listen' to wine, to revaluate its dignity and to understand its soul. Without his work, Italian wine would not be what it is today and certainly it would be said and written less about wine and of its vast world. We all owe you gratitude, dear master Luigi Veronelli, and we hope it will not be offensive if we dare to say goodbye in a friendly way - granting us the privilege of friendship - by means of the words of this small tribute to your person and to your work. Thank you Gino.

 In this column are published our reader's mail. If you have any comment or any question or just want to express your opinion about wine, send your letters to our editorial or fill in the form available at our site.