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Ciao amici del vino!
I’m writing to you from Piedmont, here for a quick trip to Slow Food International.
I was planning on skipping this week’s newsletter because, well, Italy… but I wanted to share a few thoughts on how inspiring this trip has been.
If you’re not familiar with Slow Food, it is a movement started in 1989 by Carlo Petrini—an outspoken activist who has been deeply influential in the fight against commercial farming and mass-produced food. It all began when McDonald's announced its first location in Rome, and Carlo started a protest that blossomed into a global movement.
Slow Food stands in opposition to everything that fast food represents, advocating for quality over quantity, small producers over corporations, and the preservation of land over factories. This ideology gave birth to the farm-to-table movement and many other food ideals we hold dear today.
Carlo is arguably the most important food advocate alive today, so when I was invited to attend their global summit, Terra Madre (held every two years in his home city of Torino, Piedmont), I jumped at the opportunity. I’m here with a small group of like-minded Portlanders and it’s been more inspiring than I could have anticipated.
Twenty years ago, to help cement the progress of the Slow Food movement, Carlo founded a university for gastronomic science, which not only teaches food science but also responsible agriculture and the psychology surrounding the food chain. A fellow Portlander—Sarah Weiner—was instrumental in the founding of this university and was honored this week with an honorary degree. Sarah is also the co-founder of the Good Food Awards, celebrating artisan producers committed to sustainability and social responsibility. She has worked closely with José Andrés and the World Central Kitchen, focusing on food justice initiatives, and served on the Advisory Council for the USDA’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative during the Obama administration.
Our group had the privilege of attending the graduation ceremony where Sarah was honored, and where we got to meet Mr. Petrini. At this small, beautiful campus, steeped in history, we witnessed the next generation of foodies stepping into the world ready to make positive change.
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What struck me most was the joyful sense of family and camaraderie that permeated the campus. In a world where so much is wrong with our food system (mass production, nutrient depletion, corporate corruption, animal abuse and so much more), I expected there to be an air of determination tinged with anger. Instead, there was optimism, hope, and joy.
In Carlo Petrini's heartfelt speech, he expressed exactly that: the importance of bringing joy into the world, since hope is what inspires change, not despair. When the weight of the world brings us down, he urged graduates to remember what inspired them to make change in the first place and to hold onto the feeling of home they had fostered on this campus.
The ceremony ended in the most unexpected way: with a sing-along to an old Mexican folk song that I grew up hearing from my Texan family— “Cielito Lindo.” Why this song? Petrini explained that it’s a song about hope and joy and that, when life gets us down, one way back up is through singing. Singing is good for the mind, body, soul, and community. So on a Wednesday afternoon in rural Piedmont, I found myself in a rousing chorus with 200 Italians—initially strangers, now family—tears in our eyes, hope in our hearts, and joy on our lips, as graduation caps filled the sky, belting out:
Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Canta y no llores,
Porque cantando se alegran,
cielito lindo, los corazones.
Ay, ay, ay, ay,
Sing and don’t cry,
Because when we’re singing
our hearts are a happy, beautiful sky.
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I’ll share more Italian adventures next week (the food! The WINE!), but for now, I wish you joy and hope, and the knowledge that we can all make the future a better place—one singalong at a time.
Salute
Kelsey
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Need more Italian wine in your life?
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Speaking of Italian wine - Tuesday is the last day to join October’s wine club! If you missed it, this whole fall is about Italy and we’re working our way up from Sicily to the Alps. September was southern Italy and October is central (Tuscany, Abruzzo and Emilia-Romagna). We’ll experience famous Sangiovese based wines, discuss the highest concentration of gourmet food regions on the globe, learn why you should love Lambrusco and more…
I’ll send you two bottles of wine (available via pickup, delivery or, now, shipping) and then we’ll taste them together live on zoom. If you miss the tasting live, I always send a replay.
Live Zoom Tasting 10/20
Delivery Monday 10/14
Pickup Monday 10/14 - Friday 10/18
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