We had lost track of journalist Franco Ziliani for a few years, and we were a bit worried. There were a lot of rumors… But here he came back out of nowhere with a phone call.
A few days ago I got a phone call. “Hi Daniele, this is Franco Ziliani, I heard that you were looking for me and I wanted to hear from you.“. True, it had been a couple of years that I was looking for news of him. He had literally disappeared, closed his blogs, even his phone number was unreachable, and I was definitely worried.
Franco has been and may be again (but not necessarily) a wine and food journalist. Argumentative, often even with me, but intellectually honest. He had some health problems and was hospitalized for a long time literally losing track of him. I will see him these days, maybe by the time this piece comes out I will have seen him. Not only because I have known him for decades, certainly not because we have clashed a thousand times, but because I think, all things considered, the world of wine without the sniper is a little less rich. Of sometimes questionable points of view
And expressed in a way that I almost never shared. But with a sense of justice, perhaps very personal, but authentic. Franco was a divisive, edgy man, but, at least toward me loyal. Che è la cosa più importante.
Maybe he won’t write about wine anymore, or maybe he will. What I care about is that he is better off and that he feels like seeing old friends again. To fight again, of course.
