Those were the words a close friend of his (and mine) said as he wept into his phone, recounting so many wonderful stories and such a rich history their friendship represented. Barone Alessandro de Renzis Sonnino passed away last week, another victim of this fierce virus that has been ravaging the planet for over a year now. But his life was one which we should celebrate, not climb into the rabbit hole of despair. Suffice to say, he will be missed, sorely missed. But the life he lived, one for the storybooks now, was singular, unique, a bit naughty, and from a time that is rapidly disappearing, if it hasn’t already vanished in this new millennium, this new century. He was a big tree, a little twisted (he would say "A little? A lot!”), but a big tree nonetheless.
For those who knew him, or knew of him, the Barone embodied a protean personality. He could be kind and sensitive in one swath and in the next moment calculate a Machiavellian imperiousness that would level a battlefield. He was black. And white. And colorful. But he was never indeterminate. You either loved him. Or hated him. Or loved and hated him with equanimity. I personally loved him, as many of those in my world did. And I am pissed that he got out of this world via the coronavirus currently stalking the planet.
In the cellar at Castello Sonnino, he could concentrate on the most subtle elements of his wines. He was “sentenced to a vacuous life of wandering” around his castle and environs with regards to the wines. But he took his wine very seriously. Wine, in a world where many experts failed to understand the place of Chianti and especially the Chianti from Montespertoli, and who adjudged the wine and the place as minor and backwater. Funny to these ears to hear someone think a place that close to the center of wine life could be seen as if it were someplace like Oklahoma or North Dakota. But, once upon a time, there were influences that determined what was important and what wasn’t in the wine world. The Barone didn’t give a damn what the experts thought about his wine.
I made the pilgrimage a time or two, to taste and then to drink and enjoy the company, the castle and the stories. Alessandro was an unrivalled raconteur. He was witty, he was sarcastic, he was naughty, very, very naughty. And we loved him, warts and all. Alessandro was a very much alive sexagenarian (he would like being called that, for reasons unique to him).
He was also from another time. I wrote, years ago, that he was the Barone who traveled from the 19th Century to make wine in the 21st. “I live in the 19th century,” he’d like to say, and in a certain way he did. Watching him add an Uber app to his smart phone was very entertaining; he had a curious nature, almost precocious and child-like. The Sculptor Brancusi once said, “When we cease being children, we are already dead.”
Which makes it ever so hard to imagine a world without him. Oh, he could be very exasperating. Just ask his wife. But how do you stay angry with someone with so much child-like presence? Forgive and forget.
I cannot imagine going back to an Italy where he won’t be. I’m verklempt. The bright blue sky of Italy has muddied. Everything is a bit more mucked up than it already was. And for those of us who have survived the last year, that’s already a large bag of crap that’s bursting at the seams.
We will endure one more ignominy foisted upon us in these unusual times. But we don’t have to like it. I ask myself, “What would the Barone say?” He’d have a quip, a way to render the pandemic asunder. He would dispatch it to the rabbit hole of evanescence. I just know he would have something up his sleeve.
I know he’d want us all to “Cry a little bit over me, just to humor me.” But I realize when people we love leave us, we must keep going forward. I will. We will. I know that. But for now, I think I’ll open up a bottle of his red wine and marinate just a little while in it. Won't you join me?
I’ll say it again, “Alessandro, there was nobody quite like you. You were one of a kind. And you will not be forgotten easily.”
