Monty Waldin’s recent and extraordinary post at the Jancis Robinson subscription site has been making the rounds among wine bloggers: my partner over at VinoWire, Franco Ziliani, wrote to Jancis who graciously gave us permission to repost it here. Monty’s insights as a winemaker living in Montalcino are fascinating and he pulls no punches in this piece. A must-read for anyone who’s trying to wrap her/his head around the greed that led to the controversy now known as Brunellopoli or Brunellogate.

Thank you, Franco, for making that happen!

A virtual conversation: I am such a fan of Franco Ziliani’s blog Vino al vino that one day I wrote him and said, “why don’t we start an English-language blog devoted to the world of Italian wine where I can translate posts from your blog?” Three months later — without Franco and I ever meeting in person — we launched VinoWire, a blog devoted exclusively to the world of Italian wine. Franco is one of Italy’s top wine writers and — without a doubt — its most polemical. He reminds me of Italian literary figure Giuseppe Baretti (left), one of the great writers of the Italian Enlightenment: in the same spirit as Baretti’s critical journal La frusta letteraria or The Literary Whip, Franco’s excellent blog combines erudition, wine and travel writing, and an expertly critical approach to the field — where, too often, so-called wine writers are too timid to call a spade a spade. The title of Franco’s blog, vino al vino, comes from the Italian expression, pane al pane, vino al vino or call bread “bread”, call wine “wine”, in other words, say it like it is.