It has been 10 years since the sudden death of Stefano Bonilli. We publish the letter that Daniele Cernilli published in the aftermath of the sad news.
Rome, August 4, 2014
Dear Stefano,
I don’t know why but I had been wanting to write to you for a few days and I didn’t do it only because I was very busy with the closing of the wine guide that I am doing with Mondadori. I had decided to send you the pdfs, as I had already done for the Tales book, which talked a lot about you and how the Prawn came about. Now I can no longer do that, so I write it publicly.
I was glad that all disagreements had been cleared up and that we were starting to hear from each other again. We have shared a lot over many years, moments of joy and professional satisfaction, but also great worries, real sacrifices, many skipped salaries and a lot of work without ever looking at the time. We had a common creature, now, because of fate, the same fate that took you away suddenly, I am left with only memories of a formidable era that saw us together.
I will remember the discussions, the fights, the drinking on December 26, when at your house you cooked, tortellini and boiled meat, and I brought crazy wines. Travels, the first time conquering New York in 1992, with your nonexistent English and my limp. I’ll think back to when the Manifesto assigned you a desk and a telephone to make the first inserts, but so small that the typewriter didn’t fit (they used that back then) and to do the articles we had to put it on a high stool and sit on a stack of phone books.
I was thirty-two years old, you were forty-one and a half. Yes, because since October 1986, when you called me on the advice of Edoardo Raspelli to write about wine in Gambero Rosso, twenty-eight years have passed. E almost twenty-three to work together. I will think of the time we went to Basel and then Bern to meet with Hallwag officials for the German edition of the wine guide, and we left in your Fiat Uno that barely made it over the Little St. Bernard. A journey of nearly 15 hours. Pioneer stuff. That Uno later you sold it to me for very little money, because you had bought an old second-hand Mercedes that looked like a Rolls Royce.
Then we had quarreled. O maybe they made us fight. I felt responsible for all the people who worked at the Shrimp, you understood that there was nothing more we could do to continue the work we had started so many years before. We could have talked to each other more in those moments. But even there I had a wine guide to close, and I did not realize in time the slope things were taking ..
In light of what has happened now everything takes on different connotations, and in sorrow, at least I have the small consolation of being able to mourn as a friend, as I once did. Old man, what a bad surprise you gave me. For me it is like losing the older brother I never had.
Hi, at least we hope to see each other again in a while when I catch up with you, who knows where. We will meet again Peppino Cantarelli, Angelo Paracucchi, and maybe even Enrico Casini, who preceded you a few days ago. I’ll bring the wine, though, as always.
Daniele
Remembering Bonilli:
- Herr Bonilli Zimmer drei – DoctorWine
- All those years ago | DoctorWine
- Remembering Bonilli | DoctorWine
- Bonilli Day | DoctorWine
- Bonilli and damnatio memoriae | DoctorWine
- Remembering Bonilli | DoctorWine
- Hello Stephen | DoctorWine
- Stefano Bonilli, a remembrance and an appeal | DoctorWine
- Lost Bonilli’s legacy? | DoctorWine
The opening photo is from the newspaper La Repubblica
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