As co-chair of the Wine Media Guild I go to Felidia Restaurant often because we hold our monthly lunches and tastings there. This time however I was invited by the Wine Director of the restaurant, Giuseppe Rosati, for a tasting and lunch featuring the wines of the Carpili winery in Montalcino in Tuscany. The speaker was  Giacomo Bartolommei   a member of the family that owns the winery and the sales manager.

Giacomo told us a little of the history of the winery that was established in 1965 and their philosophy of making wine.  The Carpili estate is located in the southwest part of the municipality of Montalcino.  Because of this location and the clones that they first planted in1965, the vines show great resistance to heat and disease. They only use grapes from their own vineyards and the only treatments used are copper or sulphur based. The natural yeasts, found…

After the controversial draconian measures introduced by the Monti Government, the Italian national retirement system (which is mainly State-run) was supposed to be safe and sound.

However, this year the National Institute managing the system is expected to report a 9 billion euros loss, after a similar loss already declared in 2012.

These are troubling numbers, since all the assets of the Institute amount to 15 billion euros.

Ironically, the Institute is in the red due to a string of Government decisions which were supposed to produce savings. To avoid the cost of having multiple public Entities managing the retirement system, the Institute was in fact compelled by law to incorporate many different pension funds. Such funds were often in the red since they were applying internal rules too favorable to the contributors and pensioners.

In particular, the incorporation of the pension fund reserved to public employees was a hard…