Above: Franciacorta dreaming. This photo and the one below were taken today, August 28.

Writing “on the run” this morning from the road but just had to share these photos sent to me this morning by my friend and client Silvano Brescianini, who reports that they’ve begun picking the Pinot Nero in Franciacorta.

In the image above, you can see the morainic hills (glacial debris) that violently shoot up from the landscape. The subsoil that lies at the foot of those hills is part of what gives Franciacorta it’s uniquely salty, mineral-driven character.

You can also see the clouds, owed in part to the maritime influence of nearby Lake Iseo: the clouds help to keep the fruit cool during these last days before harvest, helping to create the nuanced aromatic character of the wines made there.

Above: Feast your eyes on those Pinot Nero babies!

In the wake of a cold and rainy spring, harvest has begun late in Franciacorta.

“The 2013 harvest will be remembered as a vintage defined by late-ripening,” wrote Silvano in a press release issued by the Franciacorta consortium (he’s the vice president). “This works to our advantage because the grapes are picked when temperatures are cooler. This is fundamental for the evolution of the aromas and for obtaining the correct acidic balance.”

Read my translation of the entire document, including notes on the yields here.

In other harvest 2013 news…

This week, my friend and client Gianni Cantele has completed the Chardonnay harvest in Puglia.

And he picked some of his Negroamaro early to make a new sparkling wine (!).

And in Sicily, despite some rain and a few technical difficulties (a “sobbing fridge”), my friend Marilena Barbera has vinified her Bambina, a rosé from Nero d’Avola, a favorite wine of mine.

Harvest in Italy has only just begun. Stay tuned!

Above: “Between racism, boycotts, and an Italian-style pillory, Fulvio Bressan [has comitted] social media suicide,” wrote Alessandro Morichetti on Italy’s leading wine blog Intravino on Friday. “Fulvio Bressan’s words — beginning with ‘dirty black monkey’ — were shameful and indefensible.” Alessandro, a high-profile Italian wine professional, was among the first to post about his shock in the wake of Bressan’s rant.

“We are not racists. She’s the one who’s black.”

That’s the first line of an article posted yesterday on the landing page of La Repubblica, one of Italy’s leading national dailies.

It’s an ironic reference to an infamous and now aphoristic joke, most often recited in Lombard dialect: “mi razzista? le lu’ che l’è negher!”

You’re calling me a racist? He’s the one who’s negro!

The utterance bespeaks some — and NOT the majority of — Italians’ uncomfortable and often violent feelings about race. And the Repubblica article chronicles the tide of racial epithets that have washed over Dr. Cécile Kyenge, Italy’s minister of integration and its first African-Italian minister, in her four months in office.

(Here’s a link to the best English-language coverage I could find. It’s not exhaustive but it will give you an idea of how widespread the issue is and how it touches nearly all walks of Italian life.)

“The method is always the same,” writes the author of the Repubblica article. “First an insult is hurled” at her. “Then, an apology is issued. Then atonement is announced and assurances are given that racism has nothing to do with it and that it’s a matter of political opinion.”

Sound familiar?

A lot has been said about Friulian winemaker Fulvio Bressan’s racially charged rant that appeared on Facebook on Thursday.

I recommend that you read ex-pat blogger Katie Parla’s editorial; Stefano’s comment on my coverage of the incident; Alder Yarrow’s reflections on Vinography; and, if you read Italian, please see the post by the Roman blog Puntarella Rossa, whose authors document a long string of racially charged epithets posted by Bressan on his Facebook.

But the person who perhaps said it best was our country’s leading expert on Italian wine, Antonio Galloni, who wrote the following in the Vinous forum: “I was deeply shocked, amazed and saddened to read these comments. Unfortunately, in Italy this way of thinking is not as unusual as one might think or hope.”

How do I feel about all of this?

I’ve written about these despicable and sadly widespread expressions of racism before.

And when my friends, Italian wine educator Hande Leimer and Katie Parla, who both reside in Rome, first wrote about the episode, I felt it was important for me to cover it as objectively as possible. And that’s why I merely reported about it and rendered a translation of the comments in question.

Anyone who knows me or follows my blog is well aware of my feelings about racism.

And let it suffice to say that Bressan’s wines have been disallowed from our home for many years now and I was not his friend on Facebook.

Why such backlash from wine professionals in the United States and Italy?

Above: Morgan Pruitt, a friend and a U.S. wine professional whom I respect immensely, tweeted this photo yesterday. Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey, a leading authority on the wines of Friuli, was perhaps the first to tweet that he would no longer offer the wines on his list.

Some Italian wine and food bloggers have suggested that the outrage is hypocritical and based in heavy-handed moralism (note the -ism).

If you examined the politics and racial attitudes of every winemaker in Italy, wrote one prominent Italian wine blogger, you’d have to lower your expectations (I’m paraphrasing).

Of course, most Italian winemakers — regardless of their feelings — don’t shout racial epithets at the top of their social media lungs as Bressan did.

I believe that the outrage here in the U.S. is based more in the disconnect between the way Bressan has branded himself here and his extreme views on race.

As one Italian-American wine professional commented on Facebook yesterday: “It’s rather ironic that this guy has made a name for himself through small regional U.S. importers that give their heart and soul to promote his wines to progressive restaurants promoting sustainability, farm-to-table sensibility, and small production wine lists.”

Bressan has worked aggressively in the U.S. market and many restaurant professionals have been stunned by the gap between the person they thought they knew and the person who has emerged on social media.

Will this hurt sales of his wines in the U.S.?

Anecdotally, I can tell you that here in Austin — where his wines are very popular among the hipster wine crowd — the wine buyers I’ve spoken to are not removing the wines from their lists.

“Oddly enough, a table byo’d tonight… Bressan rosé,” wrote the owner of one of Austin’s most popular restaurants yesterday in an email. “I didn’t spoil their drink with the news.”

There are plenty of Bressan fans out there who will never learn of this episode. And that’s fine with me. I feel badly about the hardship that Bressan has created for his importer and distributors in our country. But ultimately, this episode was his own making.

Just like the Brunello controversy, most wine lovers in the U.S. will never learn of this episode and those who have learned about it will soon forget.

But for some of us, as Alder put it in his bottom line, “Bressan’s wines will never taste the same again.”

Above: A screen capture of Fulvio Bressan’s Facebook, taken yesterday shortly after 3 p.m. CST.

Racially charged comments posted on Facebook yesterday by Friulian grape grower and winemaker Fulvio Bressan have sparked outrage in the online food and wine community.

In a statement evidently addressed to Italian integration minister Cécile Kyenge — Italy’s first African-Italian minister — Bressan offered his opinion on a recently implemented government program that provides temporary housing for undocumented immigrants.

A transcription of his post (subsequently removed by him) and an English translation (mine) follow:

hei… sporca SCIMMIA Nera… io NON PAGO le TASSE per mettere i tuoi amici GORILLA in HOTEL… per favore portateli a casa tua, dove puoi fare la grande con i tuoi soldi… Ops… Non sono tuoi neanche quelli… perché te li danno gli Italiani… NEGRA MANTENUTA di MERDA…

hey, dirty Black MONKEY, I DON’T PAY TAXES to put your GORILLA friends up at a HOTEL. Please take them to your house where you can be the big shot with all that money of yours. Oops. That money isn’t even yours. Because Italians give you that money. YOU SHITTY NEGRO GOLD DIGGER.

The post was first brought to the attention of U.S.-based wine bloggers in a tweet posted late yesterday by Italian wine educator Hande Leimer who works and resides in Rome.

In a Facebook note posted today, Ms. Leimer shared a screen capture of Bressan’s comments with Facebook users.

By the early afternoon in Italy, the note had generated nearly eighty comments. Most were by outraged readers who condemned Bressan’s statements.

“Dear Mr. Bressan, you disgust me,” wrote one Facebook user. “What you wrote about Dr. Kyenge is unspeakable. I too will boycott your wines. Vergogna [shame on you]!”

“I much doubt if Florence wine,” wrote Sir Peter Beckford in 1781 (Familiar Letters from Italy), “though Cosimo [de’ Medici] III made presents of it to most of the Sovereigns in Europe, and though Queen Anne is said to have preferred it to any other, will please a palate accustomed to Claret, Champagne, and Burgundy. The most esteemed are the Aliatico, Chianti, and Monte Pulciano [sic]. That which you drink in England for Florence wine is Chianti — even to this, brandy is added at Leghorn [Livorno] to give it strength. No other will bear the sea. The common wine of the country I conclude is weak, as you seldom see a man drunk in the streets, and in good company, never.”

By the 1950s, perceptions of Chianti in Britain had changed radically, of course.

“To the Englishman in the street,” wrote Peter Dominic in The Wine Mine, a guide to the wines of the world published in Britain in 1959, “all Italian wine is ‘Chianti.'”

This wonderful example of synecdoche — where part of something represents the whole — gives insight into the legacy of Italy’s most recognizable wine brand.

Perhaps more than any other Italian category, the enonym Chianti is familiar to English speakers in the same way that Bordeaux (Claret), Champagne, and Burgundy resonate within Anglophone culture.

I’ve been thinking about Chianti this morning, in part because we’ve enjoyed a bottle of Selvapiana Chianti Rufina over the last two nights at our house; and in part because, earlier today, I came across a wonderful article on Chianti by one of my all-time favorite wine writers Ed McCarthy, “Chianti: Still Tuscany’s Flagship Wine?”

Ed is one of the most gifted tasters I’ve ever had the pleasure of sipping with.

I’ll never forget watching him call out the grape, appellation, and vintage of a Brunello di Montalcino that had been included as a ringer in a blind tasting of Xinomavro a few years ago in New York.

He’s also our country’s leading expert on Champagne and one of the nicest guys in the business.

I can’t recommend his article highly enough: it’s a beautifully written, concise primer on Chianti and it offers a shortlist of the best Chianti available in the U.S. today.

And you can probably already guess what wine he highlights as Chianti’s greatest value and best-kept secret.

Thank you, Ed. Ubi major, minor cessat.