Francesco Arrigoni was a “straight-backed” food and wine journalist who died too soon. In Ome, Franciacorta, thanks to the interest of the Majolini family, a street has been named after him, whose plaque will be unveiled on May 25.
The date is set for Thursday, May 25, 2023; the place the crossroads leading to the Majolini winery in Ome (BS) in Franciacorta. Thanks to an initiative launched by the Maiolini family and welcomed by the city council, at 6 p.m. a sober ceremony will unveil the plaque indicating that to reach Majolini one must take Via Francesco Arrigoni. A short branch but full of meanings, testifying instead to a long journey, at times shared with the Bergamasque journalist who died prematurely in 2011, always marked by mutual esteem and gratitude.
Arrigoni, as Gianni Mura wrote as spokesperson for the committee formed to commemorate his memory with an annual award, “was a journalist with a straight back, he had a short life but knew how to fill it with good and just things.” A student of Luigi Veronelli from the very early 1980s, founder and director of the Veronelli Seminar, he moved in the early 1990s to the pages of Gambero Rosso and then, in the last decade, to those of Corriere della Sera. He wrote about wine and food not as a hobby, but out of deep passion and expertise: he worked the vineyards in his youth and, like many of those who love the land, cultivated an ethical vision of it. A value he felt and lived intimately, therefore real and not just brought up for convention or, worse as nowadays it happens too often, for convenience. The same passion that is ethics of the profession, is responsibility, is freedom of thought and judgment. It is a desire for knowledge, and therefore an “act of love”
Values that the Maiolini family had the opportunity to appreciate and share in the years in which their paths crossed, those that saw the Franciacorta wine movement practically born and then grow at a dizzying pace, culminating in the establishment of the Consortium, founded precisely with the contribution of the Ome winery.
Ezio Maiolini was also its president and it was he who had the idea of naming the street after Arrigoni. “He had become a household name, we exchanged views, we developed projects together such as the Accademia del Gusto, a meeting point for food-wine pairing experiences that has hosted and continues to host major events. We thought it was a good thing to recognize a person who has collaborated with us, but more extensively with the whole Franciacorta world. Francis has done so with élan, without opportunism, believing and sometimes even harshly criticizing, but always constructively, our work. And who, like him, were able to speak about our territory in an essential way, in search of truth.“
