The wonderfully complicated and all too brief (and happy) life of Pio Boffa

A fond remembrance

There are moments in life when a particular event happens, that sends ripples across the water.  Such was the moment yesterday when I heard about the passing of a friend in Italy, Pio Boffa. Pio was just 66 years old, and another victim of the relentless Covid19 virus.

How does this happen, a little over a month after another friend, Barone Alessandro de Renzis Sonnino, passed away at the age of 62, also from Covid?

Right now, Michigan and New York states are posting higher daily new cases than Italy, with half the population. Italy has imposed greater restrictions than those states, but the grim reaper is still harvesting souls in the motherland.  

Unfortunately, Pio’s life was one of those. And what a wonderfully complicated and all too brief life it was.

But what a time to be alive and in the business of Italian wine!

Barone Alessandro de Renzis Sonnino – “There was nobody in the world like him.”

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.