Luciano Pignataro, one of Italy’s leading experts in southern Italian wines and editor of an eponymous award-winning Italian- and English-language blog devoted to the wines of Italy’s south, will join the staff of the newly christened Slow Food guide to Italian wines as its Campania, Basilicata, and Calabria coordinator, beginning with the 2010 edition (the 2009 edition of the guide is the first to appear following the publisher’s “divorce” from Gambero Rosso in 2008).

“Now that we’ve buried the age-old ideological differences between right and left,” said Pignataro in an interview posted today by VinoWire editor Franco Ziliani on his blog Vino al Vino, “the fundamental issue for the future is the question of the environment and the struggle to protect biodiversity in all of its aspects, from the cultural to the artisanal.” The “spirit” of the new guide is what “won me over,” explained Pignataro. “It is based on viticulture. Ample coverage will be given to growing practices and the wines we taste will be determined by the producers’s selections. In other words, the guide is going to be about wineries and not bottles. This is a new approach that frees me from the liturgy that was developed in the 1990s.”

Filed under: News