What does eating slow means
Slow Food is nowadays a global movement
that aims to make people appreciate and choose “true food” from local
producers.
It was born in Italy - and more precisely
in the blessed region called Piedmont, where they grow Nebbiolo grapes that
eventually become Barolo and Barabresco bottles, and where they seek after
precious white truffles of Alba - in the
middle of the Eighties, that is when all over the world the fast-food trend was
booming.
Its name, indeed, is SlowFood in Italian
language, too, as the association wants to stand in opposition to fast-foods’
culinary and the gastronomical globalization they require, as well as the
related consumption of low-quality food made with low-quality, cheap
ingredients, the abandon of local culinary traditions and products, and the
growing unsustainable food provision.
What does wine have to do with the Slow
food movement?
In the last 30 years or so, the movement
grew and went beyond Italy’s boundaries and the area of mere food, so that,
nowadays, it operates in more than 100 countries, including USA, and focuses on
wine, too, promoting cultivation and consumption of autochthonous and/or
locally grown grape varieties.
Slowine is the name of a magazine
published by Slow Foods that talks about local, forgotten excellent products
and tells the stories of proud and strong winemakers that everyday chose to
chase a quality and fair production.
Recently, some small Italian winemakers,
representing the Slow Food wine making philosophy, made a tour in United States,
to bring people’s awareness on “clean” wine making and small producers.
Slow Wine 2016 world tour
It’s the fifth time this annual tour
takes place.
Between the end of 2015 and the beginning
of 2016, some selected winemakers from Italy and the editorial board of the
magazine went through San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and New York (it was
actually a kind of World Tour that brought them in Asia and northern Europe,
too).
To get into SlowFood wine guide, a winery
can’t only produce wines that are good at taste, they must be good in a wider
sense. To say it in Slow Food’s words, they must be good, clean and fair. This
means that winemakers that step into the guide work their vineyards respecting
soil and environment, use traditional techniques (something that, for the sake
of truth, is pretty common among quality Italian winemakers, regardless their
general care for environment), and that defend the biodiversity of grape
varieties.
Indeed, almost all the listed producers
are certified organic and biodynamic, and those who are not still show great
responsibility towards environment and final customer, as Slow Food certifies
by visiting winemakers at their cellars (not tasting wines from bottles they
receive for tasting panels, like many tasters do when reviewing wines for other
guides).
The only tour stop open to consumers was
the one that took place in New York on February the 3rd, while the three former
ones were reserved to journalists and wine traders.
Some
argued that not allowing simple wine lovers to wine tasting is a strange way to
promote the consumption of a particular kind of wine among people, and that
talking about the importance of getting slow, local and environmental-friendly
while touring the world with about 50 winemakers from another continent is
pretty weird, too.
