Tag Archives: Franco Ziliani

Holy cannolo (and Franco’s thoughts on EU reform of the Italian DOC system)

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Miracles appear in the strangest of places…

It may be hard to believe but I had what was probably the best cannolo I’ve ever had in… yes, you won’t believe it… in Little Rock, Arkansas where I was traveling for business (cannolo is the singular of cannoli, btw). For me, the cannolo is all about the buccia, the shell. It needs to be firm but light, crunchy but consistent, sweet but not too much so, with just the right amount of savoriness to balance the richness of the cream filling.

I’m not quite sure how they got there, but Santo Sacca (left) from Messina (the front of the house) and chef Rosario Patti from Palermo run a fantastic little Italian restaurant in Little Rock. Some may come close, but their cannolo cannot be beat.

Rosario seasons his excellent pasta mari e monti (sea and mountain) with saffron. It was delicious.

Vesuvio Bistro
1501 Merrill Dr
Little Rock AR 72211
501-225-0500

Holy cannolo Bill Clinton! Now it’s time for me to get my butt back to Austin for some holy mole at Polvo’s.

In other news…

A lot of people have asked me about upcoming EU Common Market Organisation reforms whereby the Italian appellation system will be absorbed by the EU, to take effect on August 1. The names and classification of Italian appellations won’t change but the power to issue new appellations will pass from Rome to Brussels. I’ve translated and posted Franco’s editorial at VinoWire, including some useful links. Other alarmist bloggers have claimed erroneously that the CMO reform will wipe out the Italian system. The real question is how EU bureaucrats will deal with requests for new appellations starting in August.

Dorothy, here you come again

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Half-jokingly, a wine publicist and good friend recently remarked to me: “I mean, come on, let’s face it. No offense, but how many people read your blog anyway?” As much personal satisfaction that my blog gives me, I recognize that I’m no Eric, Alder, Tyler, or Franco.

But that’s partly what makes me all the more angry (and I promise this is my last rant for the week) when one of the truly influential sources of food and wine journalism publishes disinformation, like Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher’s supercilious take on 2004 Barolo, published last week in The Wall Street Journal, or their truly offensive and imbecilic “10 Ways to Save Money Ordering Wine,” published on Saturday. (I apologize in advance to my friend J, a WSJ editor and writer I admire greatly for this second harangue about his colleagues: the poorly delivered humor in my post about the 2004 Barolo piece was simply that — poorly delivered.) Especially in this day and “age of responsibility,” when many of our nation’s restaurateurs find themselves gripped in a day-to-day battle for survival, Dorothy and John’s tips for not being “hosed” by restaurateurs (they actually use the word hose! in the WSJ!) and the accusatory, paranoid tone or their article are no less than nefarious. It’s important to acknowledge that restaurant-going consumers are feeling the financial pinch these days as well: Dorothy and John’s readers would have been better served by “tips on how to find value on the list at your favorite restaurant.”

Here are some highlights from their piece…

1. Skip wine by the glass.

I studied Italian literature at university but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out that a glass of wine costs less than a bottle. Wine by the glass is one of the ways that we find new wines we like without having to pay for the bottle. Better advice would be: when ordering a wine by the glass, ask your server if you have the option to purchase the whole bottle at the bottle price if you like the wine.

3. Bypass the second-cheapest wine on the list.

A generalization like this is simply stupid, irrelevant, and inappropriate. Honest restaurateurs (and most of them are honest) price their wines in accordance with the prices they are charged by wholesalers. Better advice: figure out what you want to spend and ask your server or sommelier which wines in that price point meet your expectations in terms of style, aromas and flavors, and desired pairing.

6. Never order Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio.

Even Eric and Charles — two palates who really do know something about Italian wine — liked Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio when they tasted it blind in a New York Times tasting panel. Dorothy and John, come on: this is insulting. Better advice: order what you like and enjoy when you go to a restaurant. Whether you like Pinot Grigio by Santa Margherita, white Zinfandel by Beringer, or first-growth Bordeaux (wines many would consider over-priced but coveted and thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless), then go for it. You go to a restaurant to have fun… not to be scared of being ripped off!

9. BYOB.

Dorothy and John, I hate to break it to you but bring-your-own-bottle is appropriate in two cases: 1) when a restaurant doesn’t have a beer and/or wine license; 2) when you bring an illustrious and expensive bottle that doesn’t appear on the restaurant’s list. And remember: whenever you bring your own bottle to a restaurant, be sure to order a bottle of equivalent value. Thrift, Dorothy and John, is no excuse for rude behavior or bad tipping.

Here you come again, Dorothy and John, Just when I’m about to make it work without you.

Bite your tongue, Dorothy

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tongueMy Google Reader overflows with feeds these days. It’s hard to keep up with them all and I regret that it took me a few days to catch up to Alice’s post on Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher’s article “A Waning Affair with Barolo”. In their piece, the wife-and-husband team priggishly express their disappointment with the 2004 vintage of Barolo. (I read The New York Times daily. It’s my tie to the Big Apple. And I dogmatically avoid The Wall Street Journal — required reading for the rich, a manifesto and manual for capitalist subjugation of the proletariat. As a result, I was unaware of the piece.)

They say they set out to find 50 bottles under $70 so it’s not clear how many they actually tasted. But their unwarranted, superfluous, and supercilious take on the 2004 vintage is decidedly negative. The wines, they write, “really just weren’t that impressive. You can’t imagine our shock and disappointment. Flight after flight left us cold. They weren’t bad. They were pleasant enough. But with wine after wine, we used a word that should never be used to describe Barolo: simple.” Pleasant enough? Simple?

In another one of her excellent posts wherein she continues her struggle (la lotta continua) to defend the world from Parkerization (and here I take her concept of Parkerization as it relates to the arrogant, chauvinist attitude that his followers — more so than he — exude), Alice rightly laments: “I have a hard time when writers smack down vintage. In this case, especially as they really don’t seem to be experienced when interpreting young vintages, it seems irresponsible.”

It is more than irresponsible. In fact, it’s reprehensible.

When you taste a great wine (like Barolo) in its youth from a great vintage (and it certainly will prove to be an excellent vintage, if not a great one), you don’t look for greatness in the wine. You look for the potential for greatness in the wine. Beyond its tannic structure (dominant in this phase of the wine’s evolution), you look for the presence of defects. In their absence, you can begin to assess the wine’s potential for development. You also ask growers and winemakers what they think of the vintage (they know better than any) and you do your homework by reading your colleagues’s assessment of a given wine.

I looked up Franco’s post on a tasting of 57 bottlings of 2004 Barolo in September 2007 with Roy Richards, Nicolas Belfrage, David Berry Green, and Stuart George. (Dorothy and John, if you don’t know who these guys are, please add them to your reading list. They seem to know something about Italian wine.) According to Franco, Barolo 2004 was “classic vintage.” He noted that “2004 seems to be a great vintage and there are many wines worth buying and cellaring — with all likelihood, wines that will get greater over the years… [In 2004], Nebbiolo triumphed with its elegance and its singularity… One thing is certain, 2004 Barolo is a great wine and it deserves our attention, our trust, and the consensus of all lovers of great wine. In English, you would call these wines fine wines: they are elegant, refined, complex, and nothing less.”

Arrogance, hubris, chauvinism, superciliousness, ignorance, disinformation: these are words come to mind as I ponder Dorothy and John’s irresponsible and reprehensible journalism. Once again, the haughty American attitude shows its ugly head. Once again, American wine writers haven’t considered the most important elements in any wine: the people who made it and the place where they live and work. Bite your tongues, Dorothy and John.

Memorial to Baldo Cappellano

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Franco and I have posted this memorial to beloved winemaker, activist, and Barolo producer Baldo Cappellano (1944-2009) at VinoWire.

Oops I did it again: pizza and Bertani 1988 Amarone!

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Oh baby
It might seem like a crush
But it doesn’t mean that I’m serious
‘Cause to lose all my senses
That is just so typically me
Oh baby, baby

Above: Charles Scicolone can often be found at La Pizza Fresca in Gramercy (Manhattan), where they allow wine luminaries to bring their own bottles. The list there leans heavily toward modern and the prices are prohibitive. The pizza is good (although not as good as the pizza I recently tasted in San Antonio! I’ll be posting on that shortly so stay tuned).

Franco is going to kill me. I did it again: while Tracie B and I were in Manhattan for the last show in the NN+ tourette a few weeks ago, I paired pizza with an absolutely, undeniably, unquestionably, and egregiously inappropriate wine.

Two inappropriate wines, actually: Bertani 1988 (yes, 88!) Amarone and Cantalupo 1996 Ghemme Collis Breclemae (above).

One of the most important things I learned in college (and one of my favorite mottoes) was “This statement is false.” (It is a classic example of the Russel paradox. The other important thing I learned was that no movie is set in the future: “If the story has been told,” film professor Tinazzi used to say in Padua, “then it has already happened.”)

Above: Charles always orders the Margherita but I am always partial to the Puttanesca there. I never ate anchovies on my pizza until a pizzaiolo wrote the name of my band using anchovies on a pizza many years ago when I was on a summer tour in the Dolomites playing cover tunes (yes, I toured in a cover band in Italy). Evidently, Elvis Presley used to eat salt-cured anchovy fillets to soothe his throat while on tour.

What bearing does the above have on the present post, you ask? In the wake of the brouhaha that followed Dr. V’s post in which he quoted me as saying pizza could not be paired with wine, and my subsequent apologia pasoliniana, I feel compelled to confess that what I did was wrong: one should never pair two such elegant wines with the acidity and saltiness, not to mention the high temperatures, of pizza. At the same time, and here’s where the paradox kicks in, the experience was decadent, sumptuous, utterly delicious, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Above: Tracie B had a pizza bianca with broccoli raab. Also in attendance were friends Frank Butler (who generously brought the Bertani) and Michele Scicolone, who recently launched her excellent blog (definitely worth adding to your feed if only for the recipes that she shares). Charles has also become an avid blogger and I’ve been enjoying his blog and Facebook as well.

Charles’s 1996 Ghemme was earthy and had a crazy eucalyptus note, still very powerful and young, an amazing expression of Nebbiolo (and very definitely Piedmontese despite what Henri Vasnier said the other day on Brooklynguy’s blog). I’ve tasted this wine a number of times over the years and it is just beginning to come into its own.

The 1988 Bertani was sublime: a great vintage by one of the appellation’s greatest producers, very traditional in style, powerful and rich, yet already attaining the ineffable lightness that Amarone begins to achieve in its late adolescence.

Were these wines wasted by a paradoxical pairing? In other words, did we ruin the wines by pairing them with foods that detracted from their aromas and flavors? My feeling is that no, we did not: we experienced them in a new and different way than their traditional pairings. After all, the traditional pairing for an Amarone like that is pastissada de caval, horse meat stewed until stringy in red wine. Where would one find a horse to eat in Manhattan?

Oops, I did it again… Thanks Frank and Charles for bringing such incredible wines!

In other news…

If you’re into Loire and Chenin Blanc, check out Tracie B’s post on our visit to Chaume and her take on Chaume vs. Sauternes.

Memories of Baldo Cappellano

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Above: Teobaldo Cappellano in his cellar (photo courtesy of Polaner).

I met Teobaldo Cappellano on a number of occasions and enjoyed his wines immensely. He was a staunch, vocal defender of traditional winemaking and his Barolo was aged in large, old-oak casks. He fought tirelessly against the homogenization and over-commercialization of wine and was a steadfast opponent of the use of international grape varieties in Italian wine. His uncle, a pharmacist, was the creator Barolo Chinato, and Cappellano’s chinato was widely considered the best. It was a treat to get to taste with him over the last few years at Vini Veri and I felt honored to report on his contribution to the Brunello Debate in October 2008. If you speak Italian (and even if you don’t), I encourage you to watch the archived stream of the debate at Franco’s blog (just visit the blog and you’ll find it embedded to the right). His cadenced authority is matched only by his emboldened passion.

In his post today at Vocativo, Luigi Metropoli reminded us of Baldo’s motto: io evolvo all’indietro, “I evolve backwards.”

The world of wine has lost one of its great rabbis — if not the greatest.

Today, the blogosphere is flooded with tributes and memories of Baldo, as he was known. I’ve collected and translated some passages below.

The world of wine — and not just Piedmontese wine and not just the Barolo and Langa community (which he represented with authority) — is in mourning today for the sudden and cruel passing of Teobaldo Cappellano. He was a tireless activist and an advocate of lost causes — causes even more worthy for the very fact they were lost — because when you know that you have no chance to prevail, defending your beliefs is even more righteous.
—Franco Ziliani, Vino al Vino

Langa and the entire world of Italian wine are orphans today. Everything will be more complicated now that destiny has shown us high noon.
—Marco Arturi, Porthos

One of those gentle giants, long and weedy, he is winemaker, jokester, philosopher.
—Alice Feiring

The last of the Mohicans.
—Gigi Padovani

Barolo has died.
—Consumazione obbligatoria

Someone like Baldo Cappellano cannot die.
—Divino Scrivere

He was a winemaker philosopher.
—acquablog

1967 Barolo and an important book

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The night of my bon voyage party at Jaynes Gastropub in San Diego last month, Jayne and Jon gave me a bottle of birth-year Barolo to send me off in style: a 1967 Barolo by Borgogno. After driving my 1989 Volvo across country to Austin in mid-December, I let the bottle rest until the other night when Tracie B and I opened it for dinner. After we tasted and thoroughly enjoyed the wine and the experience, I turned to a tome that some (myself included) consider to be one of the most important works on Barolo and its history: Il Barolo come lo sento io, by Massimo Martinelli (Asti: Sagittario. 1993). The book was recommended to me many years ago by a restaurateur in Alba and it took me a long time to track it down. I simply can’t express its value in terms of understanding Barolo and its evolution: the vintage notes and analyses (stretching back to 1868!), the colorful anecdotes and vignettes of Barolo’s great personages, and Martinelli’s often poetic accounts of Barolo and its vicissitudes make it an indispensable tool in understanding the greatness of this wine. The title alone reveals the breadth (and passion) of Martinelli’s writing: Barolo, as I know (feel and taste it).* (I wish I had the time and resources to translate the whole book but, alas, with the state of publishing as it is and the narrow field of interest, this labor amoris will have to wait.)

Above: Please try this at home! Drink old wine with food! Don’t fetishize it. Respect it but don’t be intimidated by it. The people who made it intended it to be served with food. We served the 1967 Borgogno with pork loin chops, seasoned and dredged in flour, seared and deglazed with white wine. You don’t have to drink old Barolo with a fondue of Fontina and poached eggs topped with shaved white truffles (although that’s not a bad pairing either).

Martinelli ranks vintages as follows (for sake of clarity, my translation is slavish): exceptional, great, optimal, good, normal, mediocre, bad. His top vintages are 1947, 1971, and 1985 (some might be surprised by his assessment of certain vintages). Here’s what he has to say about 1967: “Majestic. Optimal vintage. Full, robust wine, with intense aromas” (again, a slavish translation). His drinkability prediction: “Wine with its full character: more than twenty years (1987…). Wine with its character still evident: more than ten years (1997…).”

Above: According to the newly revamped Borgogno website, the winery was founded in 1761. But 1848 is the date that accompanies the inscription on the label, “labore cum honore pro patria” or “made with honor for the nation.” I imagine the date refers to the year of the first war of Italian independence and is an indicator of Barolo’s historic significance in the birth of an “Italian wine nation,” as I have called it.

When I lived and worked in New York, I had the opportunity to taste a number of Borgogno “library” releases. According the label of this bottling, it was tasted, decanted, and rebottled in 2007, and had been topped off with wine from the same vintage. I’m not certain but my impression is that other library releases by Borgogno were topped off with young wine (a common practice for library releases, and not something that I oppose). The 1967 did not seem to have been topped off with young wine and despite its age, it was alive with perceptible acidity and eucalyptus and tarry notes, typical of old Nebbiolo.

Thanks Jayne and Jon! We thoroughly enjoyed this wine — nearly as old as me (since I was born during the Summer of Love while this wine was still in the vineyard)!

Post scriptum: In 2008, Borgogno was purchased by Italian food magnate Oscar Farinetti, who vowed to maintain the winery’s traditional style and not make it modern, even though he hired the duke of modernity, Giorgio Rivetti (the winemaker behind the rhinoceros), as a marketing consultant. In a recent post, Franco noted, however, that not much has changed at Borgogno, except for a “dusted off” website.

* In Italian, the verb sentire, from the Latin sentio sentire (to discern by sense, feel, hear, see, perceive, be sensible of) means to feel, to hear, to taste, to sense, to perceive (depending on the context). It’s akin to the English sentient.

More pizza porn…

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Here are some of the pizza pairings suggested in the wake of last week’s post, Pizza, pairing, and Pasolini. I’ve also posted some more pizza pornography just for the fun of it…

Haven’t found great pizza in Austin yet but I’m still looking!

I’m trying to get Tracie B to make me my favorite pizza: alla bassanese (the way they make it in Bassano del Grappa), with white asparagus and a fried egg in the middle. I bet that Texas Espresso’s Italian has had it that way (he’s from Monselice in the eastern Veneto, not too far from Bassano).

Thanks, everyone for the pairings! And special thanks to Dr. V for getting the whole thing cooking…


A16 (San Francisco)

I know that only Italians (and only a very small bunch of them) will follow me….try CHINOTTO (the best alternative to coke in the world).
— Francesco (Vinonostrum)

I am partial to Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Zinfandel, Brindisi, and Salice Salentino with pizza.
— Thomas (Vino Fictions)

A16 bis (San Francisco)

I’m Italian and live in Italy, but I don’t have a PhD in Italian. Like Big Moz said, going to the pizzeria is the normal get-together- not only for young people. I’ve never seen anyone order wine with pizza unless it’s someone who doesn’t drink beer at all (in which case of seen them order the house red wine). No doubt about it, beer is usually drunk with pizza.
— Matteo

One of my first loves with pizza back in my ‘tator days was Renato Ratti Dolcetto. The play of the Dolcetto fruit and acidic tomato sauce was awesome! These days I have fallen in love with well-made lambrusco, and that for me is the best mach I can think of at the moment. Try “Acino” Lambrusco from Corte Manzini, or even their base level Lambrusco Secco… PERFECT!
— Wayne (The Buzz)

Da Vinci (Bensonhurst, Brooklyn)

I know it’s not so Napolitano but old fashioned Barbera sound pretty good to me. On the other hand, some Frappato is not so bad.
— Alice (Appellation Feiring)

The combination of pizza with wine is endless, as both can carry such a broad range of subtle flavors, textures and aromas. From Chianti to Amarone, and the Ribera del Duero mentioned [below]. Even when it’s not a perfect match, there is still chemistry, like a relationship that doesn’t work, it still has much to offer.
— Global Patriot

Lucali (Carrol Gardens, Brooklyn)

When we make pizza, as we are going to tonight since we are freezing out posteriors off, I like to drink a Nero d’Avola or a Puglese red with some stuffing. My significant spouse usually goes with Zin or a red Rhone. Try a decent red Rioja or Ribera del Duero sometime.
— Marco (Anima Mundi)

My preference for a perfect pizza partner is either Piedirosso or Précoce d’Espagna.
— Alfonso (On the Wine Trail in Italy)

La Pizza Fresca (Gramercy, Manhattan)

You can pair pizza with many Italian white wines (like Falanghina, or Lacrima Christi, or Soave), and overall with some good rosé wines from Apulia (Negroamaro grape) or Abruzzo (Montepulciano grape).
— Franco (Vino al Vino)

Ok, cold nastro azzuro on draft aside, you musta to dreenk a frothy gragnano (all of you northerners are suggesting lambrusco, how about its cugino meridionale? doesn’t it just make more sense? this is the pairing of tradition with the panuozzi of the eponymous city). Or, agreeing with franco, a crisp and fruity falanghina would be my second choice.
— Tracie B

Personally the only thing I ever want with my pizza is a cold European beer (preferably Menabrea), though if the wine in question was Lini’s Labrusca Rosso I could perhaps be swayed…
— James Taylor (VinoNYC)

Angelo Gaja’s rosy glasses and apocalyptic vision and blogs I (can’t) read

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Neither Franco nor I can decipher the cryptic post published by the bishop of Barbaresco, Angelo Gaja (photo by Alfonso Cevola), at I numeri del vino (one of the most important resources in the enoblogosphere for hard data on Italian wine). Gaja seems to want his cake and eat it too, riding both sides of the fence in the Brunello controversy, warning producers that “nothing can be the same” while painting a rosy picture of a world of Italian wine free of commercial fraud. Read our faithful translation at VinoWire and let me know what you think.

Blogs I (can’t) read…

I haven’t been doing much blog-surfing lately because I am slammed with work right now and just finished my move to my new apartment in Austin. But there are some new feeds in my Google reader.

In the world of corporate blogging (clogging), I’ve really been enjoying Italian Wine Guy’s newest creation, The Blend. His insights into the current state of our industry should be required reading for any and all wine professionals (old and young).

An old comrade from the early days of the Italian wine and food revolution (think 1998-1999) in New York, Wayne Young, has taken up blogging from the far eastern front of the now Napoleonic empire (it’s funny how the revolution always becomes an empire, isn’t it?). Wayne’s winemaking knowledge is impressive and his “tell it like it is” anecdotes from the world of wine and wine writing are always thought-provoking.

When in the mood for some Lacanian musings (contemplating the signifier over the signified), I often find myself gazing mindlessly at two blogs I can’t read.

FinareVinare in Sweden often links to me and to Eric le Rouge. I have no idea what FinareVinare is saying but I know its author likes some of the same wines I do.

Billigt Vin, also in Sweden, is another one. When I “read” it, I’m like a young Petrarch with his cherished manuscript of Cicero: I can’t understand what the words mean but I know they mean something important (well, I don’t mean to compare myself to Petrarch — he was kind of a big deal, after all).

Lastly, I cannot omit a blog that I can read, Armadillo Bar by Alessandro, a long lost brother in wine and roots music and the greatest Austinophile on the planet. Sometimes, instead of checking the Austin Chronicle for what show Tracie B and I should go to, I just email Alessandro, who always responds with incredible celerity and pinpoint precision. Every time I see an armadillo on the road, I think of Alessandro and his blog.

Even if you can’t read it, Armadillo Bar is always worth the visit for the tracks Alessandro spins.

Why Italians are offended by our ratings and rankings

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Above: the architects of Italian unification (1861). To the far left, Count Camillo Cavour, Italy’s first prime minister, a winemaker (Piedmont). To the far right, Baron Betting Ricasoli, Italy’s second prime minister, a winemaker (Tuscany). In the center, unified Italy’s first king, Vittorio Emanuele II, a winemaker (Piedmont). Ricasoli’s estate Brolio and Vittorio Emanuele’s Fontanafredda still produce wine today.

A wine writer whom I admire greatly (and who happens to work in the editorial office of the Wine Spectator) wrote me today to express his dismay (warranted) with the recent back-and-forth between VinoWire (which I co-edit with my friend Franco Ziliani) and Wine Spectator executive editor Thomas Matthews. (I translated and posted Franco’s most recent entry today).

I can understand his position. After all, we are wine writers, not ideologues. My colleague is right to point out that our debate and discussion should be carried out in a spirit of collegiality and good faith. But I also feel that it is difficult for Americans (in general, not him specifically) to understand how our lists and rankings offend Italian winemakers and Italians in general. Italy was born as a “wine nation” and wine is woven indelibly into its national identity.

Italy’s founding fathers (above) envisioned wine and indigenous grape varieties as an integral part of the nascent Italian economy (remember: beyond its value as a luxury product, wine was considered a food stuff).

One of the reasons why Piedmontese winemakers grow Nebbiolo today is that Italy’s first prime minister, Count Camillo Cavour (1810-1861), recognized its potential in fine winemaking.

The primary reason why Tuscan winemakers grow Sangiovese is that Italy’s second prime minister, Baron Bettino Ricasoli (1809-1880), wrote extensively and prolifically on the virtues of Sangiovese married with Tuscany’s terroir and he boldly replanted his estate — where he had grown a wide range of French grapes — with Sangiovese, Canaiolo, and Malvasia.

Americans do not feel the same connection to wine that the Italians (and French) do. Winemaking was born in this country as a luxury industry and the tastes of our opinion leaders (Robert Parker and James Suckling foremost among them) have been shaped by a youthful winemaking tradition that favors opulence and power over balance and nuance. There’s no doubt about this. Imagine what it feels like to be an Italian and to read that one of your country’s greatest wines (Case Basse) receives pitiful scores (and even in its top vintages!) while a young Brunello producer (owned by one of Italy’s largest commercial winemaking groups) received the coveted 90+.

In the spirit of healthy debate, I encourage you to take a look at the comments at VinoWire to get a sense of the offense perceived by some of our readers in Italy.