Above: Today, for lunch, Georgia P had tortelli stuffed with stinky Morlacco (cow’s milk cheese) and seasonal asparagus in the village of Rolle (in the heart of Proseccoland). She loved them.

Among the blogs I follow, there were a number of stand-out April’s fools day posts.

Pope Alfonso shared a vision of a harmonious world where some of the most litigious among us actually get along.

King Franco revealed that he’s closing up shop and going to work for Frescobaldi (and I actually fell for it; blame it on the sleep deprivation caused by traveling with a fifteen-month old and a mommy who is twenty-five weeks pregnant).

But… it was Hawk Wakawaka who wrote the best one. Indeed, she delivered what I consider the most brilliant — absolutely and of all times — wine blog post ever.

In it she recounts her visit to the winery of Jean-Luc Picard (former captain of the Federation Starship Enterprise).

It’s sci-fi meets wine blogging, Bradbury meets 1 Wine Dude. And it gives us a glimpse (just as Gene Rodenberry did) of a future just beyond our reach…

(For a little background on wine vs. synthehol, see here and here.)

Above: Remember the last time Tracie P and I were in Rolle? The view of the vineyards was gorgeous today (as well).

I can’t recommend Hawk Wakawaka’s post highly enough!

Buona lettura (happy reading)!

One of the Italian wine bloggers I admire most, Ken Vastola, wrote me this morning asking about the meaning and origins of the Italian expression piè franco.

The designation can be confusing, especially to the non-Italophone among us.

Here’s what he wrote to me:

I have read in my places that Franco in “Pie Franco” means French. Thus implying European root stock. But Keith Levenberg wrote to me “a correction to the pages for the Pie Franco, “Franco” actually doesn’t mean “French” as is usually assumed — it means “free,” so, free feet as distinguished from feet that got cut off and tied up, I guess.”

Can you clarify this for me? I know linguistic and Italian in particular is your specialty. I thought Franco was Piemontese, not Italian.

Piè franco is used in Italian wine parlance to denote ungrafted rootstock and is often employed to designate wines made from ungrafted, pre-phylloxera vines, like the Cappellano Barolo Piè Franco. It is akin, although not derived from, the French franc de pied.

The word franco means free or independent in Italian (not French). Lexicographers point to the Franks, third-century Germanic invaders of the Italic peninsula, as its etymology. They were “free,” unrestricted by Roman law.

By the time of the Renaissance, the term campo franco (free field) denoted an open field where a duel could be held.

By the end of the seventeenth century, the term lingua franca (free language or tongue) denoted a means of communication between speakers who did not share a common language.

Here’s where it gets interesting…

Piè appears for the first time in Italian in the fifteenth century, as a truncated form of piede (foot). One of the earliest instances is found in humanist poet Politian (Poliziano, who was from Montepulciano, btw). The wonderfully maleable Italian language is ideal for poets and prosodists: syllables can seamlessly be elided and vowels can mellifluously be fused in the name of versification (my dissertation was devoted to Italian Renaissance prosody).

The expression piè franco (literally, free footed or free standing) begins to appear in the eighteenth century, the age of the Italian enlightenment (Parini, for example) meaning with unclouded thought. It’s borrowed from religious parlance, where it meant free willed.

Camminare a piè franco meant to walk with a free gait, as in the English expression to go one’s own gait, in other words, to pursue one’s own course (OED). (It’s interesting to note that Manzoni changed piè franco to passo libero or free passage in his 1840 edition of The Betrothed. But that’s a longer conversation!)

By the mid-nineteenth century, agronomists had begun to employ the term to denote free-standing trees. Many note how lower planting density in orchards can produce higher quality fruit. (The Bindoccis wrote about this recently on their blog in regard to olive grooves.)

Only later, toward the end of the century, does its usage as ungrafted begin to appear and by the end of the century, we see the first instances where it is used to apply to vines.

This makes perfect sense because the evolution of the meaning mirrors the emergence of the phylloxera plague of the 1800s.

So there! Thanks, Ken, for setting me down this path and nudging me to walk with my own gait!

The subtitle of my blog is: “Negotiating the Epistemologic Implications of Oenophilia.”

This little philological romp is just the type of thing that gets me going: using wine as a lens to see and better understand the world around us.

Thanks for reading.

Above: This caricature of the second president of the Italian republic Luigi Einaudi, farm owner and producer of Dolcetto and Nebbiolo, was published in 1950 in Italy. The monarchist publisher was convicted of libel. Click on the image for a larger version and note that Nebbiolo is spelled with one b.

The often workaday nature of my professional life is balanced by my insatiable curiosity and the unmitigated access to all kinds of information via the internets.

Yesterday, as I was roaming around the web and trolling for nuggets about the Einaudi winery in Dogliani (for one of the many restaurant sites that I curate), I came across this wonderful caricature of Italy’s second president (and winemaker), Luigi Einaudi, a figure whom I admire immensely for his opposition to historic fascism.

The Einaudi family has played impressive roles in Italian contemporary history, society, and culture, including Luigi’s son Giulio’s legacy as a publisher (the bookshelves of our home are line with works of literature and critical essays published by Einaudi, including collections of Pasolini’s writings), his son Ludovico’s legacy as a musician, and son Mario’s strident anti-fascism.

In 1950, when Luigi Einaudi became the second president of the Italian Republic, the monarchist review Candido parodied him in the caricature above.

Einaudi is the figure in the center, guarded by corazzieri (a presidential guard of Neb[b]iolo) at the Quirinale, Italy’s presidential palazzo.

The episode reveals how fine wine, and Nebbiolo in particular, was viewed as an elitist indulgence at the time. It also gives us an indication of how wine visionaries like Einaudi (he was among the first to modernize his winery and he was a pioneer in his vision of building the wine export industry in Italy) were seen as misguided.

The satirical message of the vignette is this is how our new president expects to rebuild our country… with wine.

Einaudi sued the publisher for libel and won.

An Einaudi Dolcetto was Eric and Levi’s top pick this week in their The New York Times tasting panel. I’m a big fan myself… for the wine’s traditional and classic style… and for the family’s legacy as anti-fascists and intellectual celebrities…