There’s a famous restaurant in the centre of Florence called Enoteca Pinchiorri. It has three Michelin stars and the tasting menu starts at 175 euros, not including wine. It’s reputed internationally.

According to the Michelin Guide: “For decades Pinchiorri has represented luxury and haute cuisine at the highest level in Italy. The restaurant has a number of dining rooms, including a historic room, which has an almost museum-like feel. Highly attentive service from the legendary owners, Annie and Giorgio, and an excellent menu featuring the best of Tuscan, Italian and international cuisine. The wine list is renowned across the globe.”

Three days ago, a judge agreed a plea deal from the owner Giorgio Pinchiorri (age 78) for stalking an ex-sommelier and gave him a four month suspended sentence. The victim was a 30-something woman who started working at Enoteca Pinchiorri in 2015. She quit in 2016 to avoid his unwanted advances but the SMSs, telephone calls and letters continued nonetheless for several years. As reported in La Nazione “Pinchiorri also tried to win her over with gifts and surprises outside her house.”

The local newspaper Arno gives more detail: “The employee had told him to stop more than once, even going so far as to report him to the police, and the commissioner gave him a warning and told him not to go near the woman anymore. But he [Pinchiorri], apparently, had not given up on her, continuing to give her unwanted attention, with messages, phone calls and gifts.”

The situation reached its peak in September 2019, when she found him waiting for her outside her place of work. She called the police once again and the justice system was then, this time, cranked into action.

The first I heard about this story was while scrolling through Facebook earlier today, when I saw a post from wine writer Jacopo Cossater (who writes for Intravino and has a podcast called Vino sul Divano) asking why no-one was talking about the Pinchiorri story. The comments underneath were what prompted me to write this blogpost. I’ll give a selection of them here.

“I think he has already had his punishment. After all he is a man of a certain age who has probably lost his mind. Of course she had the right to defend herself and she did. That’s enough.”

“But really, seriously, does anyone think that he actually posed any kind of danger? More than anything, it seems to me more a form of senile fallacy than sexual blackmail.

I remember that time when Marchesi, in his eighties, kissed me on the mouth. Had he had been my employer I would have been pissed off, at work I am asexual and even excessively so. Instead, I simply felt sorry for him.

“It has been in the public realm for years, Giorgio Pinchiorri and his family are “paying” for his “crime” both emotionally and criminally, I don’t understand what the restaurant has to do with it, in which families work and which is a flagship in the industry.”

“There’s something I don’t get: it is right to talk about it but it had to be done when the news first came out and in fact it did. Now there is a sentence in a plea deal. That is, there has been the course of justice, right or wrong, so the offended party – at least in theory – I believe has been compensated. So good to talk about it but it is also important to do it at the right times. In my opinion, the sentence can be a starting point but not a crucifixion.”

So if we talk about a case before it has been concluded by a judge, firstly, journalists risk being accused of slander and, secondly, the defendant should (rightly) be considered innocent before proven guilty. However, if we talk about a case once a sentence has been passed, we shouldn’t be talking about it because it’s in the past? #facepalm

It shocked me how quickly people are to make excuses for a man who has publicly conceded that he stalked an ex-employee. Every so often these cases come up, sometimes in Italy, in France or in the USA and we tend to brush it under the carpet because the man is famous, or is old, or “didn’t do it to me.”

A 78 year old is just as capable of harassing, assaulting or stalking a woman as an 18 year old man and, in this case, it’s even worse because he was blinded by his position of superiority and did not accept her requests for him to back off.

It’s time to break the omerta, to stop making excuses and instead to start putting ourselves in the position of the victim. It is a truly terrifying feeling to find someone unwanted waiting for you outside your house or your place of work. How much entitlement does this man have to feel that a lady half his age ought to yield to his advances?! We need to turn this society of toxic masculinity and misogyny into a society in which a man accepts being told no by a woman. All these stories have a common theme and the baseline is some (not all, of course) men’s sense of entitlement. So, either men need to develop the self-awareness to recognise this in their behaviour or to have it pointed out by friends, family, colleagues or members of the wider community. And we need to talk about it.

The translations above are my own. For anyone who thinks I may have been exaggerating, the original Italian texts can be found below:

“Uno degli ultimi episodi contestati dall’accusa risalirebbe al settembre del 2019, quando, uscendo da un ristorante del centro dove lavora in quel periodo, la donna si sarebbe ritrovata Pinchiorri nuovamente di fronte. A quel punto avrebbe chiamato i carabinieri. Stando al racconto fatto dalla ex dipendente, assistita dall’avvocato Federico Scavetta, Pinchiorri aveva cercato di conquistarla anche con regali e sorprese fatte trovare sotto casa.” La Nazione.

“La dipendente più di una volta si era ribellata, arrivando perfino a denunciarlo, al punto che il questore lo aveva ammonito intimandogli di non avvicinarsi più alla donna. Ma lui, a quanto pare, non aveva desistito, continuando a riservarle attenzioni non gradite, con messaggi, telefonate e regali.” Arno.