This article stems from a reflection by Massimo Fini [1] on Italian wine. In Italy, there is a widely spread opinion that "wine" is not above all an economic fact but essentially a cultural fact. The article appeared in COME DON CHISCIOTTE [2]. I admit that I can agree, in principle, with Massimo Fini. Especially living abroad, as I live, you realize how many cultural universes surround every act of opening and enjoying a bottle of wine in Italy. How to open a bottle correctly. How long before a bottle must be open, in reference to the year of harvest. The right temperature at which a red or a white must be drunk. Matching wine and food...
But in Fini's article, I also see a lot of the typical Italian arrogance, as in "What do those loutish Americans want to know about wine?"
Fini like almost many Italians (all or almost all) believes, and claims to believe, that what is Gospel in Italy is also the same Gospel in other countries of the world. In many countries, Italian food and wine are just a superstructure with respect to their social and regular cultural structures, because they could live very well without it. An exemplary case is Russia, which due to the sanctions is getting along very well without Italian shoes and Italian mozzarella, indeed it is more prosperous now than before.
In countries where whiskey or beer are the traditional drinks, wine adds little or nothing to their way of conceiving the conviviality between human beings. Like pasta. In Italy, the italioti [3] believe that everywhere pasta is the DISH par excellence. But there are countries where pasta is considered a poor dish, with little nourishment and above all harmful due to the inflammation that the repeated use of flour could cause.
Another point I would like to reiterate is when Fini says "We, Italians, are incapable of promoting our products" to highlight that the economic aspect is secondary to the cultural one. For this reason, according to him, the italioti would not engage in promoting their wines abroad. This is true but is not true at the same time.
A typical feature of the italioti is to grow products just and only for themselves. They love it and put a lot of commitment into making it. Italioti are continuously looking for excuses not to sell. In essence, italioti suffer when they have to deprive themselves of a beautiful and good product. The reason for this must be sought in the mental attitude of the craftsmanship which is at the basis of Italian creativity in food and beverage, entirely focused on creating beauty and quality without ever caring too much about selling, and above all in giving a universal value to his creations when instead it is regional and very often very local: as if, for example, the popular tarallo or fresella from Apulia were expected all over the world and the world could not live without those unique products generated by the Apulian genius. This attitude eventually gets very close to laziness and sloth, and to the inability to get out of one's typically Italian provincialism. Italian mentality is historically a small-town mentality.
But there is another aspect. The ineptitude and unpreparedness of Italian companies to sell abroad (I.e. export). Italian companies have mainly structured their product for the Italian Horeca while abroad, except for a few well-known neighbouring countries (Germany, France, Austria...) the foreign trade is structured for large-scale distribution. So both, the product vision and the final prices of Italian companies are at odds with the vision of foreign large-scale distribution, with their structure and with the vision of prices and quality.
Furthermore, Italian entrepreneurs, even the greatest (there may well be exceptions but I have yet to find them) are fearful, bureaucratic, never ready to sell but always ready to create problems so as not to sell, they are often spoiled by the excessive well-being to which they are accustomed by the internal thriving market that triggered in Italian entrepreneurs (and people) a brazen and arrogant vision, so that they demand to work only with high quantities and on their own terms and conditions that they think they can impose on the whole world. They, who live in a small country that politically speaking is not even independent but directed from abroad, since the end of the Second World War.
At the root of their incapacity is laziness, as I said above, the indolence of wanting to get out of that post-war mentality in which 98% of Italian industry is still fully immersed; the typical refrain is: this is what my grandparents did, this is what my father did and this is how I do and will do ...In Italy. there is a large part of the population so rich that can continue to live as they claim to live for another hundred years without committing themselves beyond the minimum commitment. And in any case, even the less wealthy people in Italy manage to live by inertia in the wake of the flow and lifestyle imposed by the rich classes, working the infinitesimal part necessary and indispensable to live/survive well and without an innovative vision but always old and narrow-minded. Entrepreneurship essentially reflects the typical traits of Italian vices: laziness, indolence, indifference, arrogance, individualism, provincialism, presumptuousness and arrogance, voltagabbanismo [4], and too much being spoiled by well-being which has produced a retarded, idiotic and brainless people (except for a small minority which instead it is of a very high cultural level and preparation but in any case cannot be more than 2%, or 3% if you like to exaggerate).
A good question to ask is: how did Italy become the fourth-world economic power given the quality of its society?
The answer is not easy to be responded to. First of all, it must be said that the Italian population until 1968 (annus horribilis) had other moral and ethical qualities and a different cultural level. But because I know how the world goes, I start suspecting that until 1992 an economically strong Italy was probably convenient for certain powers that move the world. Until 1992, a certain political and economic Italy was convenient to these hidden power that rule the world. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the USSR onwards, this Italy was no longer convenient to them and Italy has been reshaped and scaled down, by simply breaking up its political class, devastating its public industry and family-owned business, the backbone of the Italian economy, and abandoning it to its own and real social and entrepreneurial skills, above all to the new compliant, submissive and incompetent political class, which since 1992 onwards has worked only for extra national interests and not for the Italian country and Italian people.
But the italioti have not understood yet this, and arrogant as they are, they still live in the greatness of their past and blindly look at the nothingness and imbecility of their present condition. Italians are a dying folk, close to extinguishing. If Italy is still alive, as a country, it is in fact for its past, for the immense cultural and artistic and landscape heritage it possesses, which is perhaps more valuable than the entire world's gold deposited in a bank vault.
[2] Italian digital magazine
[3] Italiota is from the ancient Greek ᾿Ιταλιώτης, which was a denomination in use among the Greeks, starting from the 5th century. B.C., to designate the Greek colonists transplanted in the colonies of southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and is used in a derogatory way to define the easygoing, simpleton and stupid majority of the Italians who live compliantly without questioning and believe almost everything is told to them.
[4] a constantly changing-mind status
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