My heart goes out to the victims of Monday morning’s earthquake — all the folks who have lost loved ones and their homes in Abruzzo. According to reports published this morning, more than 150 persons have lost their lives, more than 1,500 have been injured, and more than 17,000 are now homeless.
Today, I’m in Trento, in the far north of Italy, and I was in Verona, asleep, when the earthquake hit at about 3:30 in the morning on Monday, with a magnitude of 6.2 on the Richter Scale (you couldn’t feel it where I was). These are the towns and villages that have been affected: L’Aquila, Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Castelvecchio Calvisio, San Pio, Villa Sant’Angelo, Fossa, Ocre, San Demetrio ne Vestini, and villages in Altopiano delle Rocche.
Evidently, there were smaller tremors the night before, at around 10 p.m., near Florence and Forlì.
Abruzzo is a place of immense natural beauty and it produces fantastic wines. On Sunday afternoon, at the fair in Verona, I tasted with Abruzzo producers Daniela and Sofia Pepe and their father Emidio (of the Emidio Pepe winery) and Stefano Illuminati of the Illuminati family and eponymous winery.
In 1994, I was a graduate student at U.C.L.A. and I lived in West Hollywood on Larabee St. when a big earthquake hit at around 4:30 in the morning. I have never been so scared in my life.
Thank you to everyone who wrote, texted, and posted on my Facebook asking if I was OK. I am.
My heart goes out to all the folks who are suffering.
Do Bianchi 
So glad you’re fine. I thought of you immediately. xx from Berlin
Jeremy:
Very nice of you to write about this. It sort of puts things into perspective, doesn’t it? We enjoy our business and are so fortunate to travel to Italy and taste wines. Here are tens of thousands of people who now don’t have a home.
A nice young couple came to the Bastianich stand on Friday and tasted our wines. They were very enthusiastic, had mentioned they had bought our wines before and always liked them. I asked them if they had a restaurant and they answered that they had a small enoteca in L’Aquila…
I cant stop thinking about that young couple…
it’s sad wayne, but just think of how lucky they were to be standing at vinitaly and not sleeping in their own beds.
la tua sensibilità ti fa onore.Di ritorno da Verona non mi va di rivedere i contatti che ho avuto, provo solo un senso di grande tristezza,malinconia e di impotenza nei confronti di tanta sofferenza.
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