Karpòs International n. 2 2015

Karpòs

INTERNATIONAL

Anno I - International N° 2 - 2015

LETIZIA MORATTI’S POSITIVE ECONOMY Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence The importance of being Gaja Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper

POPAI, creative new directions for retail-trade growth THE FATS WE ARE FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Destiny in a promise Fare dei contenuti dell’Expo2015 una vera moda

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EDITORIAL

Fare dei contenuti dell’Expo2015 una vera moda

Renzo Angelini Direttore editoriale

Carissimi lettori,

Abbiamo dedicato uno spazio importante anche all’altro gioiello del Made in Italy, ovvero all’olio e alle sue proprietà nutrizionali, perfettamente in linea con il tema centrale dell’evento milanese.

Vino, olio...Cosa mancava a questo punto per fare di Karpòs International n.2 una narrazione esemplare?

Ho pensato mancasse il pane. Con esso la nostra rivista vuole ricordare a tutti una delle radici più profonde e vigorose della nostra cultura Europea, attraverso una simbologia tutta giocata sul cibo. Ecco dunque, vino, olio e pane presenti sulla tavola dell’Ultima Cena del Leonardo, simboli di un cristianesimo proiettato verso i bisogni della gente, raccontata in un articolo dedicato ad una delle più conosciute opere d’arte mai create dall’uomo, a disposizione dei visitatori di Expo2015 a pochissima distanza dai padiglioni della fiera, alla quale Palazzo Reale ha voluto dedicare la più grande mostra su Leonardo mai organizzata.

Ma il pane è anche il tema della copertina di Karpòs International n.2, in stretta contiguità con le emozioni che solo la moda riesce a trasmettere. È una immagine che abbiamo tratto dalla bellissima sfilata proposta da Gattinoni, una delle maison storiche della couture italiana, effettuata nel corso dell’ultima edizione di Alta Moda/Alta Roma. Sono rimasto impressionato dalla sensibilità del Brand verso le tematiche di Expo2015.

La moda è un sistema produttivo importantissimo e molto influente. Considero importante la liaison con il pane, che Gattinoni ha suggerito con i suoi abiti e la spettacolare sfilata. Il cibo è anche un inno alla bellezza della vita. Questo messaggio che più dei contenuti punta ad appassionare la gente, nessuno può diffonderlo meglio della moda. E, appellandomi ad essa, termino con ripetervi l’auspicio che ho riportato nel titolo: che “nutrire il pianeta” dunque, divenga grazie ad Expo2015 anche una vera tendenza che coinvolga mente e cuore di persone di tutto il mondo.

Nel preciso momento in cui sto per mettere in rete il numero di Karpòs che state leggendo, sta per essere inaugurato Expo2015.

Vi troverete le interviste ad alcuni grandi protagonisti del modo italiano di interpretare il cibo in tutte le dimensioni, che materializzano la specificità delle nostre produzioni.

Riccardo Cotarella, oltre ad essere il Presidente dell’Associazione che raccoglie i migliori enologi di tutto il mondo, è lo scienziato/artigiano del vino che ha rivoluzionato la professione di enologo mettendola al servizio della terra, delle culture e tradizioni dei luoghi in cui nasce questo gioiello dell’ alimentazione.

Angelo Gaja rappresenta agli occhi di chi ama il vino, la filosofia produttiva che ha portato le nostre produzioni a scalare le classifiche sino all’eccellenza.

Ma nello stesso tempo Angelo Gaja è uno strenuo e appassionato cantore del rapporto vino/territorio: se oggi la bellezza delle Langhe è conosciuta da un pubblico internazionale lo si deve anche alla cura con cui coltiva i suoi vigneti e alla sua inesauribile attività di ambasciatore al servizio della promozione di una conviviale qualità.

Abbiamo ritenuto importante presentare ai lettori di Karpòs International l’intervista a Daniele Tirelli, Presidente Popai (l’Associazione italiana di oltre 200 grandi marchi), per ricordare che per nutrire il Pianeta non basta produrre di più e meglio, ma ci vuole anche cervello, scienza e ricerca, soprattutto nell’ambito della circolazione del cibo.

Ma ho ritenuto fosse un atto dovuto, partire con il racconto di Karpòs International n.2, dando la parola a Letizia Moratti, la quale ci parla del suo modo di interpretare l’Economia Positiva: è anche grazie alla sua magistrale conduzione del progetto Expo, nelle delicate fasi iniziali, se oggi Milano e l’Italia possono presentarsi al mondo con un evento all’altezza della loro storia.

03 EDITORIAL

Karpòs international n. 2 - 2015

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Editorial Director Renzo Angelini

Fare dei contenuti dell’Expo2015 una vera moda Renzo Angelini

Editor in Chief Lamberto Cantoni Pending registration in the court of Forlì

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Publisher Karpòs S.r.l.

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LETIZIA MORATTI’S POSITIVE ECONOMY Lamberto Cantoni

Contributors to this issue Stefano Candoli stefano.candoli@karposconsulting.net Antonella Bilotta antonella.bilotta@karposconsulting.net Laura Fafone laura.fafone@karposconsulting.net Administrative Manager Milena Nanni milena.nanni@karposconsulting.net Advertising pubblicita@karposmagazine.net Tel. +39 335.6355354 Press Office Centro Stampa Digitalprint S.r.l.

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28 ‘Expo 2015 is a chance for Italy to put its mark on the future’, Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

50 The importance of being Gaja Lamberto Cantoni

Photos: pp. 10-25 Letizia Moratti Press Office pp. 28-47 Falesco Winery Press Office pp. 50-61 Gaja pp. 64-75 Studio Crespi, Milan pp. 78-97 Popai pp. 98-114 Giovanni Lercker pp. 116-138 Paolo Inglese

64 Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper Lamberto Cantoni

All other photos: © Renzo Angelini Cover: Gattinoni Expo2015

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POPAI, creative new directions for retail-trade growth Lamberto Cantoni

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THE FATS WE ARE FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

Karpos

Karpòs alimentazione e stili di vita

www.karposmagazine.net

116 Destiny in a promise Paolo Inglese

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Violation of said terms will result in legal recourse and request of damages in accordance with law.

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AUTHORS

International n째 2 - 2015

Renzo Angelini

Lamberto Cantoni

Editorial Director

Editor in Chief

Giovanni Lercker

Paolo Inglese

Department of Agro-Food Science and Technology, Alma Mater Studiorum Bologna University

Professor of Horticulture Department of Agricultural and Forest Sciences, Palermo University

06 AUTHORS

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LETIZIA MORATTI’S POSITIVE ECONOMY Lamberto Cantoni

The words economy and economist have seldom enjoyed a good press since the financial meltdown of 2007-2008. Efforts by the experts of this social science have either failed to see the writing on the wall or proved unable to propose acceptable models that effectively frame and regulate market forces.

It must be said, though, theirs is a daunting task hindered by the untold complexities of a post-global marketplace. It may be time to think outside the box of abstract models and their elegant algorithms. Long years of economic stagnation and deflation are making the pursuit of a new economic vision, one less presumptuous, overpowering, and more in tune with the needs of human beings, our suffering planet and the future of our children, ever more desirable. The ‘Positive Economy’ espoused in Italy by former Milan mayor Letizia Moratti is an energetic response to the doubts engendered by the failures of a strategic branch of knowledge, too long confined to a cognitive straitjacket both sad and cynical, to address key issues directly affecting us.

The ‘Positve Economy Movement’ in Europe started at Le Harvre in 2012 under the advocacy of the charismatic Jacques Attali, noted economist and President of PlaNet Finance Group for micro-credit loans to SMEs. In Italy it has for now gained notoriety through the mass media in the debate over the value of GDP, an aggregate concept taken as dogma by most mainstream economists, as a reliable measure of an economy’s worth. The PEM idea is as simple as it is revolutionary: we must learn to gauge the real wealth of a country by focusing far more on the welfare of its citizens than on GDP. Our vision of the future should expand its horizons to take in what the celebrated Annales historian Fernand Braudel dubbed the longue durée. The first in Italy to take up these ideas were Letizia Moratti and her working group at San Patrignano. This June will see the gathering

of their 2nd Forum: its agenda tasked with giving these ideas an operational framework.

It must be said that Letizia Moratti, even unconsciously perhaps, has always championed positive economic experiments and practiced them as successful businesswoman, first woman to be appointed President of the state-owned RAI TV and Radio networks, innovative Minister of Education in the second Berlusconi government (the first to see the merits of the now much acclaimed German model), and the first woman mayor of a city as important as Milan, whose winning bid to host Expo 2015 was the result of her intuition and political skills.

Mrs Moratti has always sought to ‘do things right’, putting the house back in order when necessary without hesitating to innovate its contents with clear-cut decisions from the very beginning, no matter how debatable or heatedly contested the methods. It is an approach that eschews the dogmatic and the algorithmically abstract to instil values that can underpin our aspirations, hopes and sense of belonging to something bigger than the sum of its parts. It is nice to think that her insistence on values for doing the right thing stems from her long experience at San Patrignano, one of Italy’s most important social experiments whose symbolic import today may even surpass its renown as a rehabilitation community.

Indeed, it’s hard to escape the thought that we’re all a bit drug-addicted from ways, means, ends and visions whose pseudo-values leave us solitary and incapable of seeing beyond a present without memory that is fast consuming the future of Italy. Whence San Patrignano and the economics seeking to recover the social forces cast adrift by the standard model. Or, in keeping with the subject, whence a positive economy that turns brilliant idea into experience and food for thought.

Letizia Moratti.

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LETIZIA MORATTI’S POSITIVE ECONOMY LAMBERTO CANTONI

So, now that the person and the stage are set, it’s time to listen to the voice of our subject who recently talked with us in a frenetic Milan awaiting the May opening of Expo 2015, a proscenium whose players will offer a more detailed scenario for thinking about and addressing some of the key issues of our age and the world they will help to shape in our future.

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LETIZIA MORATTI’S POSITIVE ECONOMY LAMBERTO CANTONI

San Patrignano: ready for the grape harvest.

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Letizia Moratti, then Mayor of Milan, celebrating the city’s winning Expo bid.

Q: Mrs Moratti, despite the much bruited about ‘third way’, is it my impression or do few Italians have any real idea what ‘positive economy’ means or what it implies, even though everyone feels it’s needed?

our planet’s resources is a real problem and a great challenge. Perhaps it’s even the decisive issue of our times. Six years or so of a weakened economy have sapped people’s confidence in appeals to the strength of individual resourcefulness and market regulations as an effective formula for rectifying the sense of having lost the past and seeing a dim future. It’s a collapse of confidence that

A: I think we can all agree that a capitalist model focused solely on the pursuit of profit and aggressive, cynical exploitation of

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Q: Convincing institutions and those wielding the powers that be to change bad trains of thought will not be easy in my view. An economy open to social well-being has been talked about for ages but the most influential economists see it as weak on science and strong on romanticism. Indeed, it seems to me that the term sustainability has been used and abused to the point that its meaning has lost all purchase…What do you think?

may dissolve the glue of shared social values that, in my view, are fundamental for sorting out straitened circumstances.

I felt it was time to put ‘the other’ back on the agenda in new words that opened the door to our real roots again. Speaking of economics, it’s an ‘opening’ in perfect harmony with the Positive Economy Movement that arose in France, a school of thought that seeks to rescue capitalism from the conceptual quicksand dragging it further and further down and away from the social terra firma. Positive Economy means, first of all, working to put capitalism back on the right track with a view to the long term. If we could learn to keep the well-being of future generations in sight when making our decisions, I’m convinced that those decisions would be enormously strengthened.

Doctrinaire economic thought whose time-line arrow points to the past takes for granted that individuals are motivated by self-interest. I rather think that what makes us typically human and stems from the gift of awareness is our altruistic streak. Setting goals for ourselves that transcend the pure ego-bound impulses of the moment implies a goal and incorporates values that connect our lives to those of others, from the most vulnerable to those who have yet to be born but could be part of the whole.

I realise that seeing things this way may seem like something akin to a new generosity. But that’s not the case. It’s in our own interest to see that working for others is part of our own interest. The altruism advocated by the positive economy is rational and at the same time a commitment to achieve greater efficacy in everything we do in life. The values that connect us bestow efficacy on our institutions, our business enterprises and on every individual. The values that connect create the empathy needed for hope, for confidence and, from my viewpoint, for a new, proper alliance with our planet’s resources.’

A: I realise that the new vision advocated by the Positive Economy Movement is a real re(e)volution, to borrow a coinage of Jacques Attali. Today, however, we’re faced with a situation completely different from past scenarios. Our economies have been in thrall to a crisis that urgently needs the re-thinking currently going on. By their nature, these analyses and interpretations are not just an intellectual exercise but a strong drive to take action for a change of direction in our prospects. Urgent too is the need for institutions to realise the import of a long-term vision that takes on real responsibilities for future generations. We must not forget that the Positive Economy is not rooted in abstract theory. Rather, it is grounded in architectural thinking that endows it with authority and regard. It is, let’s say, a bit like a laboratory where a heterogeneous mix of life experiences can test and develop new approaches to problem-solving through the manifold endeavours of social economy.

It bears repeating, though, that we must provide greater traction to the ideas, the potential reach, of the Positive Economy through a reorientation of strategic priorities. For instance, we need to lay down a seed bed for a social finance, utterly unlike the speculative, that is purposed to supporting the ‘Third Tier’ of society–the wayward young, marginalised adults, the elderly, the disabled. As any number of experi-

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Picking grapes at San Patrignano.

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Mealtime at San Patrignano.

can no longer be applied indiscriminately without resulting in social trauma. The demand for help from the vulnerable on the margins of the economic system is growing exponentially whereas the supply of welfare is shrinking. The Positive Economy needs to be developed, the weaker members of society need to be included in sustainable schemes which, I’m convinced, will make the whole more robust for everyone.

ences have shown, if we change the settings on our scale of value judgement, all these endeavours can in time lead to benefits far greater than the sum of investments used to finance them. It is an approach that has long been practiced in the English-speaking world, and my commitment is to see it put to the test here in Italy.

A first step is to make people realise that the dominant economic-financial model

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Mealtime at San Patrignano.

Q: What do you expect from the public and private spheres?

of incoherence, incongruence, contradiction. For example, the funds provided by the foundations of the banking industry are essential for non-profit organisations. If you increase their tax burden, you automatically decrease the financial potential they can devolve to the ‘Third Tier’. Governments have many options and levers for re-orientating and including social ethics in corporate missions. There are good examples, now it’s

A: Coherence and involvement. But no matter how many can agree in words, it’s deeds that count. Government authorities have often publicly stated their willingness to give the ‘Third Tier’ traction through targeted schemes of social finance. Yet going from there to action is often met with a tangle

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time to add the resolve needed to spread the benefits.

young men and women who learn day by day through a programme of recovery how to overcome their individual frailties and sense of alienation to achieve the awareness needed to lead responsible lives and to recoup the sense of altruism that structures our relations with others. This transformative process of therapy includes learning how to take care of the more vulnerable forms of life like plants and animals that need constant care and attention. Vincenzo and the kids of San Patrignano have planted more than 100,000 trees. Dedicating time and effort to learn the skills and attain the enthusiasm and force of character real craftsmen devote to their materials and techniques is part and parcel of their therapy.

I know I’m digressing but let me note that today what the kids at San Patrignano produce, whether it be organic produce, wine, crafts or anything else, is often accorded excellent-quality rating because the pursuit of quality in their work is a kind of tool helping them to achieve self-respect and professionalism. It’s an essential building-block to recovery while providing a solid contribution to the community’s economy.

Now, to your question about the Positive Economy and San Patrignano…Well, San Patrignano is in effect a positive economy and source of social financing, and not solely for the things I’ve just mentioned. We’ve been active for years in devising micro-credit schemes to finance many of the enterprises of young people once they leave the community. We have what we call social bonds, a debt instrument whose maturity is linked to the achieving the result. We’ve also calculated that our efforts to rehabilitate kids with severe problems save the government some €32 million a year. So by any measure San Patrignano has been a pathfinder of the Positive Economy for years and social financing is one of its best instruments. That’s why it holds the Positive Forum every year

Q: It seems to me that one good example of the Positive Economy is San Patrignano.

Having had more than one occasion to visit there, I’d say that my impression belongs to the kind of experience you might call, with a bit of emphasis, indelible. It’s clearly important to reiterate that San Patrignano’s mission as a community is to transform people who have lost their way into people who can accept life and the responsibility it entails. Yet it also seems to me that over time the community has also become a narrative whose power transcends the individual stories of its characters and acts as both model and catalyst for other endeavours of the Positive Economy. Is that right?

A: I’ve been going to San Patrignano since 1979 and am an eye-witness to its successes. The community has helped more than 25,000 young people so far without assistance from their families or the government and has returned 72% of them to meaningful social life through rehabilitation. These are numbers, let me add, that justify taking the ideas it stands for to the attention of the public at large. Having had the privilege of working with Vincenzo Muccioli, its founder, in the years when his method was taking shape has undoubtedly implanted in me certain principles that have been with me ever since. Vincenzo Muccioli had a dream that the community would eventually be run by the kids it rehabilitated. While that dream could not, of course, be realised in a flash, the path it staked out, let me say from my own observations, has now led to the fruition of that dream.

Every year San Patrignano provides a home free of charge to hundreds of drug-addicted young people in dead-end lives whose real fear is life itself. Today it houses nearly 1,300

Vincenzo Muccioli and the kids of San Patrignano.

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in order to take stock of, debate, analyse and gather first-hand experience for everyone involved in or wanting to approach the positive economy. Our goal is to turn the pathways of the positive economy into viable highways for everyone. This is the narrative of San Patrignano. The people it is dedicated to helping are its mission and the good results have reinforced the keen pursuit of it what it does while spreading the messages bearing witness to the values it embodies.

One such message is surely that well-being begins by living in tune with nature, a message that all of us should give thought to, not just the kids who have overcome their hurdles through San Patrignano.

Officially speaking, care farming received government financing by the 1990s in the Netherlands, although unofficially it dates back much farther and similar experiments had been seen in Italy in the 1970s. This multi-functional approach seems to attract a growing number of mostly young people, from what I can see. Care Farms are a real opportunity to help a broad spectrum of people who are especially vulnerable to social marginalisation in ways that restore their dignity. We should spare no effort to encourage and expand the enterprise, endowing it with continuity and a future. Their interests are our interests.

Q: You are, needless to say, one of the most influential women of your generation in Italy. You’ve contributed to breaking down symbolic barriers of resounding mass-media impact–first woman president of the state broadcasting networks, first woman mayor of Milan. You have taken on big challenges and battled through conflict and competition with men…Have you ever felt underestimated because you’re a woman?

Q: Speaking of messages, the number of Care Farms appears to be growing in Italy.

Would you say that the experience of at San Patrignano and the appeal of the Positive Economy as practiced there can be taken as a case-study for them?

A: Part of the tradition of rural life and livelihood lies in the bonds they have always had with those who have mental disorders or physical handicaps, something far removed from the frenetic rhythms and often, unfortunately, selfish dynamics of city life.

Rural networks of solidarity have always been a structural feature among individuals and families. Everyone in the countryside has a place at table and everyone is included in one way or another in farm chores.

Care Farms take their cue from this tradition and have an extraordinary capacity to help particularly vulnerable people. Indeed, their multi-functionality goes beyond the usual farming activities to cultural, educational, social services, occupational training and even work programmes that can, for instance, attenuate youth unemployment and the attendant welfare costs charged to taxpayers.

A: I count myself lucky. I’ve had an education and privileges that always led me to think I was the equal of anyone, so to speak, and have always acted on that perception and principle. You deal with persons not genders in the world. Of course, I’m not blind to an issue that affects women less fortunate than I am. Old habits of seeing women as disadvantaged in society, the family, at work or even at risk die hard. They are in my opinion islands of ignorance that we must remove.

Women have specific gifts and talents that are great resources in a world that, to my mind, has become too small and vulnerable to be governed under a typically male, conflictual scheme of things. Looking about and observing certain patterns of behaviour,

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Letizia and Gianmarco Moratti.

I’ve come to think that men are hard-wired to fantasies of conquest and the inevitable escalation of conflict that follows it like a shadow. Women on the other hand, even the no-nonsense, strong-willed like me, are prone to taking care of the things they come into contact with. It seems to me that the really important issues of our times are in need not of conquest or conflict but

greater care in the sense of harmony and altruism.

Lamberto Cantoni

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‘Expo 2015 is a chance for Italy to put its mark on the future’, Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

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29 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

Thursday 12 February 2015, Falesco Winery at Baschi in Umbria As my glance roams Riccardo Cotarella’s office moments to prior our interview, arrayed before it is a career of distinction and distinguished service. Framed upon the walls are the eloquent tributes: a diploma from the prestigious Oenology Institute of Conegliano Veneto awarded in 1968, the diploma of

his Honorary Doctorate from the University of Tuscia in 2011, one certificate honouring his Presidency of the Italian Oenology Association, and another his term of office as President of the Union International des Enologues. It crosses my mind that the label ‘oenologist’ is more straight-jacket than ac-

Guest House, Falesco.

30 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

Barique cellar, Falesco.

curate description of a decidedly monumental career and the many talents of the man who fashioned it. Our several telephone conversations reminded me too of his skills as communicator and business leader, facets of the man to which others had already drawn my attention. To this hastily sketched portrait let me add a personal touch-penetrating insight and depth of thought drawn from an uncommonly gifted mind.

When he walked in and we shook han-

ds, what immediately struck me was the commanding presence of a person whose unassumed elegance of bearing was calmly projected in a gaze that seemed to take you in without perceptive effort. Yet rapid glances towards a window, whether the real one opposite him or an imagined one behind his gaze, gave you the impression that part of him was elsewhere, in his vineyards perhaps, striding upon the soil and amongst the vines to which he has dedicated his life and work.

Winery, Falesco.

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Guest House, Falesco.

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Barique cellar, Falesco.

Vineyards, Falesco.

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34 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

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Q. Mr Cottarella, your seemingly endless professional commitments now include chairing the committee overseeing the architectural design and interior appointment and displays of the Italian Wine Pavilion at Expo 2015. The World’s Fair seems to me as both a truly global event and an occasion extraordinaire to let loose

the power of dreams in the light of day.

Whether we are engaged in the agri-food industry or have yet to perceive its fundamental importance for the very the existence of mankind, the dreams we fashion can open our minds and shape new visions that can point our steps towards the path of meaningful change.

Artist’s rendering of the pavilion at Expo 2015.

36 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

A. It still remains to be seen whether we Italians have really grasped the importance of Expo 2015. Part of our cultural DNA inclines us to prefer polemos over harmonious intent.

We’re not very good at teamwork. But we’re masters when it comes to creative individualism, no matter what the field of endeavour.

We’re way too fond of working at extenuating

cross-purposes, full of useless sound and verbal fury. While this doesn’t stop us dreaming, it does stop us dreaming in unison. If a dream is not a force that unites, it will end up stillborn.

But what perchance are we to dream? The words of Pope Francis, in my opinion, are illuminating: ‘There’s food for everyone, but

37 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

not everyone’s eating!’ My preference goes to dreams that help us to face up to reality with determination and hope. The Pontiff ’s words also remind me of the farsightedness and intuitive resolve possessed by former Milan mayor Letizia Moratti when she managed against nearly all odds to make our country the host of one of the world’s most important events.

‘Feeding the Planet’ is the message it bears and it gives voice to everyone who works for peace and economic development. It invites us to dream, to hold before our eyes a vision projected towards the future that embraces all of humanity.

Pope Francis also admonished us to make sure that such a dream will indeed lead to a

world where food scarcity is banished forever from our midst. We’ve got the know-how and technology to realise that dream. We know how and where to produce our food and we can improve its distribution. We also know that we must work to heighten awareness of consumption and of the health benefits food provides. Quite apart from the global showcase that Expo 2015 will be, a person like myself, who has dedicated a life to the scientific study of wine and the land that generates it, has the ethical obligation to make Expo 2015 an experience that truly raises our cognizance of and awakens our consciences to the value we should ascribe, and the respect due, to the foods we consume and where they come from.

38 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

39 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

Q. How will Italy’s wine industry approach this momentous event? What role do you see for it?

and that my generation of oenologists finally dispelled.

Taken as a whole, Italy is an extraordinarily rich ecological niche that makes it possible to cultivate vines and make wine from Valle D’Aosta to Pantelleria. The secret lies in the perfect match of a given area, by which I mean the result of scientific study of a territory’s soil, to elevation, exposition, microclimate and the other complementing factors that science brings into focus. The heart of the matter is the match of territory and cultivars, the grape varieties, that embrace it, thrive in it and make of its generative power an asset. Let me exaggerate a bit by noting that lately I’m fond of repeating wine is what endows a given area with personality.

In other words, nothing more so than wine seems to act as the value-catalyst of what the French call terroir. The insights gained from this complex web of knowledge has led to the recovery of the wide-ranging assortment of native, or heirloom, cultivars of Italy, a col-

A. Wine is a finely cut jewel in the crown of Italy’s agri-food industry. By this I don’t mean to emphasise the issues proper to the trade even though by any measure of quantity and quality the country is at the top of world standings. My intent is rather to point out that no other product of Italy has the historical depth and cultural aggregate wine does. In no other country but Italy has the Greco-Roman tradition taken root as firmly as in the soil and hearts of its people. True, this evolutionary path evinces all its twists and turns rather than hewing to a straight line. Received notions rooted in myths, which my work has helped to debunk, had it that vineyards must be confined to certain areas that alone were worthy of the labour it takes to produce wine. These were legends that had sprung from weak scientific soils

40 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

lection unique in the world and far superior even to that of France. We felt that Expo 2015 should showcase both the passionate attachment to wine of the stewards of our vineyards and the exceptionally diverse range of the wine they produce. We see it as a chance to draw the public at large into an experience both intellectual and sensory that each of these

wines intimately embody. A good wine must tell a tale of provenance, suggesting where it came from and how the environment shaped it. There’s no future for wine without identity, without personality. And without that identity the entire history of vine and wine that my generation of oenologists has brought back to light will fade into oblivion...

41 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

Q. Explicating the nuances that make-up the personality of wine is, I must confess, no mean feat. Yet apart from wanting to acquire a taste for the Produce of Italy, it’s also most likely that today’s global-market consumers will want to experience what you call the identity that moulds each of our wines. Marketing and the educational slant you’re hinting at are, of course, important but not exactly easy to bring to fruition.

goals we want to achieve. Maurizio Martina, the Agriculture Minister, and VinItaly are helping us in designing and building an architectural gem I like to call the Palazzo del Vino.

Visitors to Expo 2015 will recognise it instantly from its prominent façade sign: ‘VINO, a taste of ITALY’. It’s a building of harmonious lines with a contemporary touch of glass-enclosed spaces and unusual shapes.

Yet the real story is what lies within. We’ve devised a multi-sensory pathway that gives visitors not only an intimate knowledge-tour of wine’s historical, environmental and productive forces but also one that exerts active sensory communication. The idea is that taking this path leads to an adventure in the world of wine that involves the mind, heart and body. We’ve

A. As you’ve rightly noted, it’s a complicated task but not too daunting. In fact, it’s made us even more determined to create something truly worthy of all that bespeaks of excellence in production and of the ethical and cultural

42 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

shaped the spaces and laid down the paths to render the impression of time suspended. Our ideal visitor will enter, walk the charted course and experience the pace of time and the cultural passions commanding the phenomenon that is wine. Every visitor should come away with a

real grasp of the environmental diversity that the more than 540 winegrape varieties of our country have given rise to. It is an explicit invitation to experience the ties that firmly bind this wealth of earthly produce to the variety of our landscapes, towns and cities.

43 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

Another facet of the efforts we’re bringing to bear on our task is the use of space. We have tried to configure and arrange spaces as vectors, or media, of perceptual messages emanating in the colours, sounds, sights and aromas that are proper of wine and of wineries. Our aim is to weave the strands of sensory perception into a tapestry that will remain firmly hung in the minds of our visitors. The idea to be impressed is that wine awakens the senses to the flavours of life, from passions to reason, from beauty to the stirrings of the reality around us.

I like to imagine too that the vast wine cellar to be found at the end of this journey will be a fitting climax to the entire experience. Here visitors will have the chance to taste some 1,400 wines displayed in a room designed as a futuristic wine cellar-an interactive module whose wealth of resources are there to inform and to transform the encounter with wine into something that stimulates, educates and instils respect for the efforts dedicated to its making.

We shall, of course, be holding seminars, workshops and conferences as well as making ample room for the science, art, music and humanity that have always been prominent features of the world of wine. I’m convinced that everyone who comes to visit us will come to know Italian wine in a way that no aficionado can convey or mere words can match.

44 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

45 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

46 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

Q. While you were drawing the picture of the Wine Palace, a thought came to mind that goes beyond the issues connected to the Milano Expo. I was wondering what an oenologist is today. Listening to you made me think that apart from being a scientist and experimenter of the complex, perhaps the modern oenologist is also a cultural impresario or maybe a kind of orchestra conductor keeping an infinity of elements in transformation to the tempo proper to the group.

terroir, the wine that expresses it to the full and the material culture that endows both with the meaning and enthusiasm that are typically human. A friend of mine once told me I reminded her of an engineer at work. I took it as a compliment. Yet the simile of orchestra conductor is perhaps more appropriate so long as it’s a conductor who steps down from the podium to join his ‘instrumentalists’ and never tires of learning from them the art of conducting what is always in the process of being.

A. Oenology is multi-faceted. While it has a definite scientific thrust, it must also combine solid practical expertise and intuition. Let me add too that without a sense of history and a certain aesthetic élan it could become a technique that loses sight of its raison d’être, which to my mind is the interconnecting weave of

Lamberto Cantoni

47 Riccardo Cotarella looks ahead with confidence Lamberto Cantoni

VALLEPICCIOLA è una realtà nel Chianti in via di rapida evoluzione, e sarà composta da: • Moderna cantina in costruzione (completamento finale per la primavera del 2016). Dotata dell’impiantistica e flusso della produzione piu’ moderna sul mercato, garantisce un isolamento termico ideale (essendo incassata nella collina), ed ampi spazi.

• Sessanta ettari di vigna piantata da 3/5 anni, con altri potenziali 40 che si dovrebbero aggiungere entro breve.

• piu vitigni,capeggiati dal classico Sangiovese che hanno dimostrato un perfetta adattabilità al nostro habitat • Consulenza tecnica del nostro amico agronomo – enologo Riccardo Cotarella.

La sfida è di offrire al mercato, a partire dal 2016/2017, sette diversi tipi di vino di alta qualità.

Dai ricordi delle molte estati passate in infanzia nelle vigne dei nonni paterni, è nata l’idea di creare dal niente un’azienda vinicola.

Dalle decadi da imprenditore è nata la determinazione ad attuarla, con la disciplina ed i fondamentali di modernità che i tempi domandano.

Confidiamo che le risorse, l’attenzione, la determinazione, la professionalità che stiamo tutti dedicando a questo progetto portino ai risultati che ci siamo fissati.

Speriamo veramente che il nostro progetto abbia il Vostro apprezzamento, e che raggiunga l’obiettivo di suscitare il Vostro interesse sull’evoluzione dinamica dell’Azienda Vinicola VALLEPICCIOLA. Grazie, Bruno Bolfo Società Agricola VALLEPICCIOLA S.R.L. CASTELNUOVO BERARDENGA (SI) - Italia Tel. +39.0577.357539 Fax +39.0577.357525 www.vallepicciola.com vallepicciola@vallepicciola.com

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The importance of being Gaja Lamberto Cantoni

As Daniele Tirelli insightfully notes in his wide-ranging, witty and edifyingly brilliant tour de force of our ways of thinking about and eating food, Pensato & mangiato, ‘…imbibing, but most of all talking about wine… is a sign of urbanity, polish, grace…No other commodity we have has inspired a poetic tradition proper that is just as cosmopolitan, elaborate and finely tuned. Oenology, let us say, often becomes Oenosophy.’

It is hard to find fault with his observation.

Lest we forget, however, for centuries wine has been freighted with another, distinctive tradition in its ‘cradle’ countries of the Old World. Nearly all the wine once produced in places like Italy, for example, was considered a staple tout court–altogether a matter of quantity rather than quality. These cultures and the ways they cultivated their vineyards and made their wines were rooted in traditional practices that tended to eschew inquiry and experiment. This attitude

began changing not all that long ago, and by the 1960s a cohort of individuals animated by unshakeable fervour, insatiable curiosity and a resolute sense of the practical began to shape a paradigm shift that was most notable in the wines of Italy.

One of those in the vanguard of the cohort whose efforts have helped to propel Italy to a privileged positon in a marketplace that spans our terrestrial globe is Angelo Gaja.

His wines are praised and prized everywhere. His innovations in wine-making and marketing have an aura befitting a person whose drive is as legendary as his character.

The town of Barbaresco in Piedmont’s wine-growing Langhe districts is the headquarters of Gaja. The buildings adjacent to the main Palazzo house everything needed to organise, produce and regulate the steps that turn unique grapes into wines eagerly sought after by connoisseurs like precious gems of the earth.

Angelo Gaja, his wife Lucia, son Giovanni and daughters Gaia and Rossana.

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Grinzane.

52 The importance of being Gaja lamberto cantoni

The hills bracketing the road leading to the town have an austere beauty and harmony of contour that defies description. The steep slopes with their lime-clay soils are the ecological niche nurturing the Nebbiolo vine and the Barbaresco and Barolo wines, the cultivar’s most famous for their distinctive personalities and surprisingly welcome longevity.

We’re running a shade later for our appointment, knowing full well that Angelo Gaja is a stickler for punctuality, at least according to some of the legendary stories that have grown up around him. That he doesn’t suffer fools gladly, nor especially anyone who is tardy, is one such. Yet the neatly rising gradients of the vine rows gracing the hillsides are more conducive to tarry than to hurry, the desire to linger before the beauty of a landscape that celebrates man’s dialectic with nature exerting a stronger pull than the appointed time.

As soon as we arrive, we are courteously ushered into a very cold room, likely reserved for latecomers, to await the appearance of Angelo Gaja. Just when your feet and hands begin tingling in alarming discomfort, the dry sound of approaching footsteps mingled with a voice rising in pitch signal the arrival of the person we’re here to see. The voice became more audible even before the door opened.

53 The importance of being Gaja lamberto cantoni

‘We can’t let them get away with this! Names, names!! Brought to book! No nonsense this time!’

Angelo Gaja is warmly wrapped in overcoat (even legends evidently feel the cold in the detention room), and his tone of voice louder still as he opened the door, his head turned towards the room he was leaving. I started, almost instinctively getting to my feet with a shiver. ‘I’m…’

‘No, no, not you!’, he said as he shook hands, then repeated over his shoulder, as if voice-boxing, ‘Not this time! They can’t! It’s over the top! The names have to come out!

We’ve got to get back to the task at hand…

1937

and do it right from now on! Into the cooler the lot of them, I say! Even that’s too good for them! It’s just not done’. Zero tolerance!’

I had been warned that this interview wouldn’t be easy but, anyway, we have a ring-side seat to what promises to be a quite a show. Then he turned to face us.

‘They’re saying doubters about Expo’s importance for the country are legion. But I want those holding up the works to be held accountable. The names! Let’s get this cleared up, now and fast!…We can’t let doubts linger…And we can’t let them get away with it…with what they’re doing! NO, SIR!’’ You see, people still don’t realise that agriculture’s the key to the country’s growth. Those of us in the industry don’t want to be some hostage Cinderella to mindless bureaucrats any more. Apart from the event, which I bet you will be an extraordinary success despite the nay-sayers, the theme itself, when you think about it, strongly suggests that there will be quite a follow-up if we’re able to manage it.

I’ve trotted the globe promoting the prestige of the wine that comes from my home, my vineyards, and that message has been welcomed with open arms everywhere. Yet, despite their enthusiasm for my wines, to most of these same people my part of Italy and the country itself are familiar only as names on labels and picture-postcards. Expo 2015 is important because it’s a chance for others to see there’s a lot more to us than just Venice, Rome and Florence…it’s a chance to see the rural side of life. Milan will be the red-carpet host, but thousands upon thousands of people will discover the productive heart of Italy. And when all those people see what our countryside can so, they’ll be agape, speechless.

My family’s been working the hillsides and soil of Nebbiolo, transforming them in an ecological oasis where viticulture is the environment’s steward, for five generations. There are so many towns and small villages here in the Langhe that dedicate all their efforts to vit-

1978

54 The importance of being Gaja lamberto cantoni

Langhe, Serralunga.

Now you know why all the delays over Expo, the setbacks, and, yes, the backhanders get my hackles up…Let’s have the names out in public. The names! Throw them out! Out with them all! Then let’s get back to the real work…

The guilty must pay! Be brought to book! IN THE LOCK-UP WITH THEM!”.

As the shrill notes of the last utterance faded, Angelo Gaja got up and with a peremptory, ‘Follow me, we’ll go see the winery cellars now’, he strode away, voice calm, with us in tow heading towards some of the inner sancta of his domain. It must be said that we were getting used to our host’s charisma in a hurry. He wasn’t giving me a start any longer when he kept repeating like an ombudsman ‘Out with them!…Bring them to book!’ and you began to see how he deftly orchestrated a harangue that underscored the man’s decisive, no-nonsense character and how he

iculture that you’d be hard-pressed to count them all. These hills and their soils have been producing wine since the 7th-8th centuries and that today could give a solid boost to a tourist sector catering to those seeking memorable experiences on a par with the artistic treasures our country possesses just about everywhere. Encourage people to discover our terroir, as the French put it, means emotionally and intellectually grasping Italy’s diversity, as well as the field craft practiced in our vineyards, the environmental stewardship it nurtures, the diversity of flora and fauna it supports, the beauty of the landscape it produces and the pleasures and flavours it adds to a cuisine that inspires conviviality and generates enthusiasm in all who take part in it…

Expo must be the catalyst, the driving force of a genuine desire to experience how Italians turn food into culture, quality, feelings.

55 The importance of being Gaja lamberto cantoni

Barolo vineyard landscape.

experience. In other words, most of a wine’s potential quality and properties are already decided when the grapes go from the field to the winery. Yet the complexities one perceives in savouring a wine depend to a great extent on what goes into the wine-making itself, things like the yeasts used in fermenting and the oak casks for ageing…The casks for ageing you see over there are made of durmast oak, for example, and finding the right wood is no easy feat. If it’s cut the wrong way, or the quality is poor because it’s not been properly aged, the properties of the wine will suffer.

I’ve gone round to most of the best coopers in the business to find just what we need to get the results we want but the perfect cask is still elusive. The corks we use could be better too.

Even if it seems hard to believe, they can be dicey. They’re a tricky part of the steps that take fine wines from the field to the tables of those who really appreciate them’.

employs it with a theatrical verve and irony to emphasise the message he wants to convey. Even the forthright striding through the cellars is not about being in a hurry, or being rude to his visitors, but an inner impetus fuelling the momentum of a mind projected towards the next step, unafraid of change and ready to deal with any challenge head up, realistically, imaginatively and to the point.

‘As you can see, this area of the winery is pretty much in order and tidy – he said slowing to a momentary halt. – The reality, though, is that it’s one of the high-tension rooms when work begins rising to an extended peak, a bit like being in the vineyard at picking time.

When asked to speak in public, I like to remind my listeners that a good wine stems from the vines not from the winery. And then I add that making top-quality wine requires notable skills, art and the expertise of long

56 The importance of being Gaja lamberto cantoni

Clotilde Rey 1880-1961 By then we were walking through a tunnel leading underground from the cellars to a building on the side of the road opposite our point of entry and soon found ourselves in a building whose large hall is appointed for tastings.

Angelo Gaja excused himself for a minute, leaving us to admire the beauty of the elegant lines and the beauty the façade the restoration of the main Palazzo brought to the fore. When he came back, he stood before a large monitor and, without further ado, started telling us to the sequenced accompaniment of images across the screen the story of his family and of their treasured Nebbiolo, the soil that nur-

Angelo Gaja 1876-1944 tures the grapes and the blends whose quality is irreproducible anywhere else.

‘My family, whose origins are Spanish, settled in Piedmont towards the mid-1600s, and my great grand1905 father Giovanni Gaja established the winery at Barbaresco in the heart of the Langhe in 1859. His son Angelo my grandfather, we’re now up to the second generation–married Clotilde Rey, my grandmother, in 1905. She was an exceptional woman with a strong character and a good dose of business foresight. She convinced my grandfather to focus his talent on producing only fine-quality wines. Clotilde, I might add, was quite a woman and I was very fond of her. She was

57 The importance of being Gaja lamberto cantoni

strong-willed and always had something to say that stuck with you.

When I got my diploma in oenology at Alba and started in the business in 1961, the wine industry was sliding fast down a slippery slope.

The only way out was to innovate in the field and in the winery without tossing the baby– the good part of traditional know-how–out with the bathwater. My grandmother and the things she’d taught me were like a compass helping me navigate some pretty rough seas.

Those were days of trial and error, experience was in short supply and certain decisions you made left you and the few you could really count on feeling a bit lonely. For example, I had to invent marketing at a time when practically no one here knew the meaning of the word. My grandmother’s lessons have stood me well, helped me stay the course, given me food for thought and…”

Q: Sorry, but could you tell us something about those lessons? (My question was injected at his pause).

A: ‘Don’t worry. Of course, but first let me finish what I was saying…Clotilde and Angelo passed the baton to their son Giovanni, my father, who began a notable expansion of the business in the best of family traditions. He purchased some of the best vineyards in the area like Costa Russi, Sorì Tildin, Sorì San Lorenzo and Darmagi. These moves expanded production and kept quality high. He also started ageing and bottling only the best vintages and sold the rest in bulk as table wine.

All this helped propel Barbaresco to the top spots of Italy’s wine market.

To this day my father’s lesson is still the golden rule and the grapes that are not up to the standards we set for them don’t make it to the casks. We can’t afford to disappoint our customers or cast even a flicker of doubt on an elite brand and reputation that’s taken generations of hard work to build. My father was a great believer in the ethical values the craftsman brings to his work like painstaking

selection of materials, the right blend of curiosity and skill and great pride in the finished object. The artisan has to embody them all and know how to deploy them to get the desired result all that effort entails. So my father too was a great model for me to follow. As a matter of fact, I consider myself a craftsman who puts it all on the line and into a product that’s the epitome of his labours…I’m all for innovating, discovering and experimenting so long as we don’t lose sight of the craftsman and his values’.

(Another pause and I quickly interrupt to ask the unanswered question posed before.)

Q: Excuse me, but can you say something about your grandmother’s ideas about marketing?

‘Yes, Ok, just let me finish first…Where were…Ah, yes, we’d got to the third generation of Gajas with my father. As I said, the wine business was going through a shakeout in 1961 when I started. I soon began travelling in France at the time trying to see how to improve the quality of our wines. The thing I noticed right off was that we needed targeted advertising for our brand labels, our market identity to so speak. Italy’s wine business was years behind France’s then and I wanted to upgrade the properties of our grapes and improve the complexity of Gaja wines. So we began innovating, fine-tuning, our practices in the vineyard and our techniques in the winery…Perhaps the most difficult task that fell to me was convincing our customers that Gaja wines were on the same par as the great French wines. That was stressful…Now, what would you like to know about Nana Clotilde?’

Q: Well, about Clotilde’s marketing lessons?

There seems to be something interesting about…

A: ‘Indeed, Nana Clotilde was one of a kind.

She had a way with words that opened your eyes to new directions. What she said was simple, made good sense then and reassured me later when the going got rocky and kept

58 The importance of being Gaja lamberto cantoni

Langhe hillside vineyards.

who are the envy of the world at large. In the end, you see, the success of the Gaja enterprise goes a long way back and, insofar as I can remember, our family have always hewed to the row of those rules. We’re vintners of the finest wines for sale to truly discerning customers.

As a matter of fact, we seldom drank wine at home when I was growing up. I remember once, it was 1954 and times were still hard in that post-war era and there was little food and money to go around. I was 14 and in my first term at the oenology school in Alba. One day I was in a hurry to get up from the table but my father stopped me, went to fetch a bottle of wine and poured a couple of ounces in a glass. My grandmother glared disapprovingly at a gesture she thought was a waste of good wine. She turned silently livid, got up and left the room. My father then invited me to drink it and said, ‘When you know how to drink wine, you know how to live!’ Those words have become something of a motto embodying the Gaja spirit of life. Our grands crus are

my feet firmly on the ground and head on my shoulders when they were going well. Clotilde believed that only a real craftsman had the skills, the talent and the honesty to make truly top-quality wines. I suppose it’s a matter of family tradition, but those words are impressed so vividly in my memory that I can still repeat them. They boil down to what you might call her 4 commandments: LEARN HOW TO DO IT, it’s hard for anyone to argue with that, DO IT, which means the true artisan at work with his ideas and skills, TELL HOW TO DO IT, to her this meant teaching others how things are to be done and the right way to do them, and KNOW HOW TO SHOW WHAT YOU DO, which is the knack for advertising to the world what you are capable of.

It’s a credo that, to my mind, if everyone were to put it into practice, our country at least would be better equipped to support and defend its real worth, which is the wealth that mainly comes from craftsmen, the artisans,

59 The importance of being Gaja lamberto cantoni

Ca’ Marcanda 2001

01 paolo inglese

Il destino in una promessa Ca’ Marcanda 2013

Cypress Lane & its stylised label right.

taurateurs who want to offer their customers an unforgettable experience of convivial cordiality…We don’t really sell wine. Rather, we make it possible through the complexity Nebbiolo embodies for people to savour, to dream, to converse, to experience feelings by drinking a wine into which are poured the passion for perfection and the art of five generations of vintners whose love of the Langhe is the stewardship of the land from which the grapes of that wine grow’.

created for living well, for those who appreciate the pleasures of sharing some of life’s more memorable moments with a wine that never belies where it comes from and how and by whom it is made’.

Q: Could you tell us something more about the Gaja philosophy of life and business, how it’s been shaped?

A: ‘When you look at the labels on our bottles, what do you see? A proper noun, the information every label must have and the two basic colours–white and black–essential, elegant, to the point, pure. That’s what Gaja means by style. Barbaresco, Sorì Tildin and Sorì San Lorenzo, to name just three of our top wines, are the paladins of those values. They are essential in that the grapes we grow and the wines they yield are produced by protecting the environment with purely good field and winery practices…Most of the wine we make and bottle is sold not to individuals but to res-

Lamberto Cantoni

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adv Studio Cattaneo / ph Mauro Magagna

Massimo, paolo, armando, Tiziano - Mezzane, verona — ore 12:10 AziendA AgricolA TenuTA SAnT’AnTonio / info@tenutasantantonio.it / www.tenutasantantonio.it

64 Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper lamberto cantoni

Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper lamberto cantoni

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper Lamberto Cantoni

The painting before restoration.

The magnificent mural painting of the great artist-cum-inventor Leonardo da Vinci attracts a nearly endless stream of visitors to Milan every year. The worldwide fame both he and his work of art-perhaps the most famous and admired single such work in the country-will in all likelihood make the chance to see it a high priority for visitors planning to attend Expo 2015 this year.

Milan called il Moro, must have thought it would never be finished. Those last touches must have brought a palpable sigh of relief at court since Leonardo had always struggled with his inner demons in labouring to compose his works and projected designs and many were left incomplete or on paper in his sketchbooks.

Contemporaries who saw the new painting were awe-struck. The impression was so breath-taking that everyone saw it as though the artist had wrought some kind of magic spell in paint. The Last Supper was on its way to becoming the universal essence of the expressive power of painting for following generations. Even now, after the plethora of aesthetic and formal experiments of the avant-garde and off-shoot movements

According to Luca Pacioli, mathematician and friend of Leonardo, da Vinci finally finished The Last Supper in 1498 in what later became the refectory of the Dominican Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie. In the 4 years he took to put the last brush strokes to the painting, more than one person at the court of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of

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The figure of Christ after restauration.

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The figure of Christ before restauration.

Detail of the bread on the table.

68 Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper lamberto cantoni

Detail of a garland in the lunettes.

69 Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper lamberto cantoni

Phillip apostle.

70 Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper lamberto cantoni

that came to the fore throughout the course of the twentieth century, art lovers the world over still see Leonardo’s work as a unique artistic achievement carrying the values and visionary scope that exceptional works of art embody and transmit.

Today, although the painting can be seen by only small groups of people at a time for reasons of conservation, more than 300,000 queue up at the entry to the refectory every year awaiting their turn to contemplate what remains of that artistry and the magic

St John.

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Detail, position of the figures’ hands.

technique to endow the figures and forms he depicted with new solidity and light. The carefully wrought natural details were worthy of those in Pliny’s tale of Zeuxis, and we can readily imagine how sensational an impression this illusion of perspective was in an age when most people judged a work of art by its resemblance to the real. Once they became accustomed to the painting’s new aesthetic perceptions and emotive sensations, the good friars must have wondered about how such a visual rendering could be gleaned from the Gospel since Leonardo’s depiction was nothing like other images then in circulation. Indeed, traditional iconographic representations of the Last Supper had the Apostles arrayed in double file with Judas to one side and Christ in the

this masterpiece works. Yet where does its power to fascinate reside? How is its beauty beheld? Let’s try to imagine how the painting first appeared to the courtiers and the Dominican friars who took their meals in the refectory. None had probably ever been so close to such an image of the sacred before. The effect Leonardo had endowed his work with was such as to extend the room’s surrounding space in which the long table at which Christ and his Apostles are seated appeared to be tangible, projecting the likeness to a real one that must have seemed to truly prodigious. To the devoted friars it was as if the verses of the Last Supper in the Gospels of Matthew and John had somehow materialised before them.

Leonardo had employed an experimental

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spake. He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith unto him, Lord, who is it?” Leonardo has taken what we might call a dramatic setpiece and magisterially transformed it into an epiphany of rare human frailty and feeling. Never before had anyone portrayed human passions and emotions with such painstaking finesse.

Looking at the gestural and facial expressions of the apostles, we can easily divine the shadow of dread that tragic prophesy cast. Some disciples appear cut to the quick and on the verge of declaring their love for Jesus, some seem to be intently wondering aloud whom their Lord was alluding to, and others still seem to look at him in shock as if paralysed. Perhaps the apostle who felt the shock most in Leonardo’s rendering

symbolic centre of the visual field administering the sacrament.

Leonardo instead wanted to highlight the drama at the climactic moment of the Supper by rendering the range of feelings evoked by Christ’s surprising and shocking revelation.

As recounted in the Gospel according to St John, Jesus announced the approaching end of his earthly life with the words: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.”

John then tells us the reaction these astounding words had. “Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom he spake. Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, that he should ask who it should be of whom he

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Detail.

is Simon Peter. He is depicted as suddenly leaning towards St John, a movement that pushes forwards a Judas whose suspicious look expresses embarrassment.

What strikes us most is the range of expressions with which Leonardo endows the apostles and the measured cadence that invests the entire tableau. While carefully eschewing rhetorical flourishes, he captures for the viewer the realistic bewilderment of the apostles without ever losing sight of the Last Supper’s primary significance resigned

acceptance to the foreshadowed sacrifice the redemption demands.

It can be surmised that his experiments in technique and nearly endless tinkering with depiction enabled Leonardo to execute such an effective rendering of scene. In fact, the usual fresco approach of applying colours quickly to a wet plaster surface would not let him take the time needed to ponder and then render in detailed, expressive power emotions viewers can empathise with. A dry plaster surface was the matrix needed

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more than twenty minutes per group. For potential viewers who want to prepare for the visit, they can access a high-definition image of The Last Supper at www.haltadefinizione.com.

This state-of-the-art digital composition is made up of 16 billion pixels from high-tech 677 photos. To better grasp just how this one work has become icon of art itself and the name of the person who executed it a universal term synonymous with the word artist, suffice it to note that the site registered 1,500,000 hits a 48 hours after it was released on-line a few years ago.

to ‘cast’ the figures in their apt ‘physical’ presence and bring their facial expressions, brush stroke by brush stroke, to the pitch Leonardo wanted his interpretation of the Gospel story to convey.

Yet this ‘dry’ technique also proved to be the very undoing of his masterpiece. In the span of only a few years, the painting began to flake and led those admirers who would try to stem the ravages of time and humidity to attempt a series of risky restorations.

The latest such undertaking was completed in 1999. It had been a twenty-year effort that removed the over-layers of ‘restored’ colour that had so wantonly distorted the original painting and brought to light what remained of Leonardo’s brush strokes.

A visit to see Leonardo’s masterpiece can be booked through the accredited agencies. Visits are limited to 20-25 persons admitted for no

Lamberto Cantoni

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circlestudio.it

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Horton Plaza Shopping Mall, San Diego, CA: a masterpiece of commerciale post-modern commercial architecdture has rejuvenated the city centre.

POPAI, creative new directions for retail-trade growth Lamberto Cantoni

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Conversing, listening and weighing our words sometimes let us grasp just how subtly nuanced the register of pleasure produced by language is pitched. It’s something that finds me agreeing to an extent with Theodore Zeldin when he asserts in Conversation. How Talk Can Change Our Lives that some conversations let us feel caught up in the spiraling whirlwind that changes the course of events. A good case in point is a recent conversation, which was really supposed to be an interview, with Daniele Tirelli in Milan. It was in actual fact a profitable exchange that made me realise how instructive an experience new ways of putting things can be.

Daniele Tirelli is that rare academic who can shuttle between the ivory tower of his field and its opposite arena without losing his balance. His books, especially Pensato & Mangiato, are of singular cultural wealth.

While listening to him lay out his thoughts at ease, it crossed my mind that particularly pleasurable conversations are much more than an exchanging of views and sharing of emotions since they prompt us to transform and reshape our experiences by directing them towards new trains of thought.

As Zeldin pointedly put it, ‘…Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards…’

Tarantelli and, after his tragic assassination, with Professor Jean Paul Fitoussi. His academic career has been punctuated most notably with a stint as an executive at Nielsen Corporation (formerly A C Nielsen), where he was the first in Italy to combine econometrics and the US-based company’s vast survey data of worldwide consumer goods and markets.

Q: Professor Tirelli, your courses this year include Consumption Styles and Trends at IULM University in Milan, Consumer and Shopping Behaviour at Milan State University, and Economic Policy Institutions at the University of Reggio and Modena, and you have also taught at the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo.

That’s quite a multi-faceted take on consumption, not to mention your numerous books and contributions to various journals and magazines. How important a role did your tenure at a multinational market research firm like Nielsen Corporation play in shaping your career as academic and author?

A: Quite a decisive one, really. It gave my intellectual outlook a global horizon while keeping my feet on a firmly pragmatic business ground. When I went to Nielsen, a great ‘school’ in every sense of the word, they taught me that studying the processes of how markets develop and how consumer demands tend to swing required not only expertise in economics but also a strong streak of intellectual curiosity and handson experience in dealing with a broad, heterogeneous range of places and situations and relations with all sorts of people. Not to mention putting your nose to the grindstone ‘crunching numbers’.

It was the beginning of a splendid intellectual and professional adventure, so to speak.

The means at the disposal of an internation-

A few words of biographical flavour about Daniele Tirelli are in order before moving on to our conversation. His is a rather particular cultural and professional profile.

Current President of the Italian Chapter of POPAI (Point of Purchase At-Retail Advertising International), he earned his undergraduate degree in physics at Bologna University, where the economist Professor Beniamino Andreatta, who also held cabinet posts in several governments, encouraged his interest in economics and econometrics leading to his PhD under Professor Ezio

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al network like Nielsen gave me the chance to test and apply the most advanced models for analysing micro-phenomena in various areas of retail consumption and predicting emerging trends. When speaking of marketing, we are, of course, talking most particularly about the evolving patterns in distribution and retail circuits, a broad window of opportunity for my explorations of the most salient innovations in the big US and European retail chains. That vantage point, for example, made it possible to clearly see the gap between Italy and the rest of the western countries in the 1980s-90s, a lag subsequently made up with the spread of superand hypermarket chains in a phenomenal burst of modernisation of Italy’s economic system. The spearhead was provided by a notable array of independent entrepreneurs and executives in the cooperative movement. In effect, a great deal of the ‘consumerist’ well-being we’re still enjoying is due to the efforts of these people, who were often arch-competitors.

That was also a time when leaders of consolidated tradition in the food and beverage industries were revamping their business models and branding their labels–companies like Barilla, Ferrero, Campari and Lavazza come readily to mind–and when newcomers like Bauli, Rana and Rovagnati expanded in size and market stature during

a period of uninterrupted growth. Then too we witnessed an accompanying boom in the number and reach of advertising agencies riding a wave of creativity that became the hallmark of what you might call ‘Milan’s Madison Avenue’ that would later merge with the network of the big international agencies.

I later realised that I’d had a privileged observation deck to all this and have always tried as an academic and author to convey, to give back, to others at least some of the wealth of insights and first-hand knowledge that accrued through these experiences and through my business and ‘field’ trips to study how companies were dealing with the head-long growth tempered by rethinking and overhauling approaches to important industry issues those days brought to the fore.

Q: The impression this listener has is that the entrepreneurship you observed and that marked those times is no longer with us. If we look at our own country, my feeling is that getting down to business, so to speak, is not a top item on the current agenda. It seems to me as though the challenges on the table before us today have failed to ignite the enthusiasm and strategic responses needed to meet them.

The subprime meltdown of 2007 appears

9th Retail Visions - POPAI convention at Milan’s Triennale.

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Horton Plaza Shopping Mall, San Diego, CA: internal view with allusions to Verona’s Piazza delle Erbe and other Italianate features.

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Toy“R” Us Flagship Store, Times Square, NYC: the four-floor megastore of the leading toy retail giant.

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rather to have lit a fire under the seats of anti-modernist goblins that the economic boom in the decades preceding had put to sleep.

Q: How do you see the crisis and how has it changed your scientific and intellectual outlook?

A: As the 2000s progressed, the markets that had been the bellwether of all those businesses, which were still shielded in part from intra-EU and international competition, began to show the first signs of saturation and segmentation. The ties linking consumers to products and brands became increasingly knotted. The ever increasing range of goods and services and, hence, the expanding preference options of consumers undermined, even perilously so, the Keynesian model of aggregate consumption and its power to stimulate the economy through government policy and intervention. My horizons expanded from the quantitative side of the equation to more emphasis on an approach that also included the qualitative, sociological and anthropological factors. The growing and at times discouraging complexity of the situation led me to see the increasingly important role being played by the big retail chains, especially abroad.

The upshot was my being tapped for and accepting the presidency of POPAI in 2003, a time when the association was re-focusing its mission. It began putting greater emphasis on its role as driver of an international ethos for Marketing-At-Retail, a term broadly meaning the suite of pro-active measures retail outlets earmark for customer relations.

It wasn’t very long ago at all that men and women driven by the enthusiasm of ambition built what we’re fond of calling today the ‘Made-in-Italy’ corporation. Yet that extended peak of professional passion and creative thrust combined with a lot of hard work never quite managed to secure the position and recognition commensurate with the lift it delivered to our economic, social and even cultural foundations. The dawning of the new millennium over Italy brought to light the limits and constraints stemming from its long, complex and tortuous historical trajectory. At the end of the day, the firmly anchored roots of an ‘anti-capitalist’ mind-set would prove to be more resilient than anyone imagined. The hurdles thrown up by the challenges along the path of a changing European Union and its single currency our society and economy needed, and still need, to meet in order to retain that thrust have continued to prove higher than expected. As the financial downturn melted into crisis, the complexities of market globalisation and the costs of the strait jacket of a ‘state-control’, dirigiste mentality whose bureaucratic red tape is fertile ground for pulpit demagogues and passing the buck soon took their toll. While the engines driving other lead economies in the West are propelling them beyond the crisis, we’re not in gear yet. Instead of rolling up our sleeves like the post-WWII generation did and giving priority of place to the ethic of work and savings, our first response was to blame unfettered consumer spending and invoke ‘happy de-growth’ but then began to whinge for someone, without saying who of course, to reboot consumption and the economy.

Q: There are those who say that one of the structural consequences of the recession, the longest we’ve seen in the West, wars excluded, is that nothing will be as it was beforehand. So are the changes already in store and that lay ahead for marketing and retail, not to mention consumers and customers, irreversible, and that advertising in the trade will have to be re-thought?

Caesar’s Palace Forum, Las Vegas: the shopping mall’s spectacular entrance.

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Whole Foods: interior of the store in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Whole Food: interior of the store in San Mateo, California.

A: Whoa! Hold on…Let me begin with Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty: succinctly put, we enjoy ‘freedom from’ hunger, cold, illness and so forth, but we suffer the ‘freedom of ’, which turns into the ‘must of ’ choosing among the many brand names offering food, insurance, holidays, cars, clothing, restaurants, books, entertainment, and so on down the line. This also has to do with why the word ‘customer’ ought never to be mistaken for ‘consumer’. Consuming a product takes place at home or in other places but seldom at the point of purchase. Conversely, when a person becomes a customer, he or she is already deciding upon a set of options regarding what the market offers by way of purchase and where to make it. And, lest we need reminding, there are millions

upon millions of goods and services our society offers. It’s a reversal of the fundamental paradigm of the economy–today it’s supply that creates demand. Any visit to a retail outlet turns into a foray of exploration. Every day you can discover something new that is just what you’re looking for or that arouses a ‘must have’ you weren’t even aware of, a bit of serendipity if you will. And it’s all regulated by the astonishing mechanisms of the market, when it’s free of course.

Only the naïve would think that customers and consumers are under the sway of advertising’s spin. The role played by the retail outlet is far more prominent on the market’s marquee. This is the message our association is keen on getting across. We’re the medium whose chief task is to make the public at large

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Edeka (Dusseldorf): interior of the store where coffee is roasted and sold.

for the displays around which the final purchase is enacted. This is just an example of what is now called a ‘consumer experience’.

It’s the end result of how concerted expert efforts can turn the humdrum act of buying in every-day life into an unforgettable moment that makes the day for many consumers.

Millions of similar decisions shape the standard of living for billions of people and their popular culture and end up influencing as well ‘elite culture’, politics and geopolitics.

And, yes, having seen first-hand how the rising middle class of the new People’s Republic of China that Deng Hsiao Ping set in motion behaves, I’m more inclined to be reassured about the future with respect to what the fanatical, fury-fuelled mass parades unleashed by Mao Zedong inspired.

pointedly aware of everything being successfully developed and brought to market by the most innovative and advanced ‘stores’ in every corner of the globe. The flagship outlet of Toys“R”Us in New York City’s Times Square is a good case in point. Our job is to explain that all the ingeniousness and outstanding features which go into the making and the surroundings of the store itself need to be decoded and how to do it. It’s a bit like a matryoshka doll. First you start with the macro-container that’s Manhattan, which holds the magic and dazzling catch-all of Times Square, which holds the grandiose toy store, which holds in turn attractions for entertaining children and the theme shops of the various brands each of which is continually changing its fantasy-inspired set designs

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Q: Even advocates pressing ideological critiques of consumer capitalism are changing colours today and mustering with forces under the grass-roots banner of ‘sustainability’. How does POPAI see its role in these debates, whose symbolic fallout can have baleful consequences for the retail trade?

I feel more relaxed and comfortable when having to talk to my designer-dressed female Chinese students about the Cultural Revolution. Consumerism, with its flare for fashion spreading and sharing, is a great leveller of the pitch among peoples, far more so indeed than utopian slogan mongering.

I like comparing the world of retail trade to a rainforest with its enormous riches of plant and animal life sharing an environment which is nonetheless highly competitive. Whence POPAI–it works hard to document and explain the origin, development and prospects of the near infinite number of retail businesses that bloom not only and no longer just in the US but even in countries like China, Dubai, Egypt, Brazil and Russia that until yesterday were seen as backward.

These are countries whose middle classes are growing fast and driving the expansion of their economies through consumerism, a term of derision for much of the dominant culture in Italy.

Á propos of consumerism let me offer an illustration of what I mean by our relationship to ‘consumption’, something deemed excessive by some but still weak and ill-distributed by others. Countries can be roughly divided in two big camps–let’s call them the ‘consumer democracies’ like the US and its emulators in one and the ‘social democracies’ like Italy in the other. The latter are countries where ‘consumer sovereignty’ takes a back seat to the social order of employment, protection of the professional classes, top-down state planning and zoning, and so forth.

Consumer protection in these countries is

Walgreens: Flagship Store in Chicago, Illinois.

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the responsibility of the state, which also mediates between the vested interests in the marketplace of supply and demand.

It’s the consumer democracies that exhibit a dynamism and ethic clearly superior to the social democracies, though at a price that derives from the harshness of rugged individualism. Take several simple examples. A ‘pharmacy’ like Walgreens that sells overthe-counter drugs as well as beer, wine, tobacco products and those to quit smoking, and where you can even eat a snack as in supermarkets, is an inconceivable abomination for many Italians. It is just as unthinkable to allow a warehouse-club like Costco to sell over-the-counter drugs in bulk packaging of 750 pills for $5 without the oversight of a licensed pharmacist. More outrageously anti-social is to view higher education as a consumer service subject to market forces even if such a system produces an incomparable flow of scientific discoveries and top-calibre professionals with the skills to match.

For Italians, education cannot be other than public, nor is it admissible for residents of small towns simply to decide whether a ban should be placed on the opening of the umpteenth supermarket when that is the job for a committee of bureaucrats who are accountable only to the political powers that be. And the list goes on and on.

POPAI has played its role by duly gathering the data demonstrating to Italy’s business community the advantages of a retail trade that’s free to develop and innovate. Some examples are worth citing here too. It has introduced ideas like shop-entertainment by illustrating sales outlets designed as much to providing meticulous service to its customers as to making shopping fun for them.

It has described the new eco-compatible and responsible trend called green retail. It was the first to report the development of digital signage, a new form of advertising and interactive communication that can be

placed anywhere and that turns the monotony of indoor and outdoor spaces designed by elite ‘arbiters of taste’ into fun and surprising places through digital graphics and visual motion. And it brought to the fore the impact of the new high-tech forms of digital payment, customer loyalty schemes, hybrid combinations like eateries in retail outlets–in short everything catering to what customers, who are always right, wish.

In a country like Italy that always seems to have its cultural antennae bent inwards and set to short-term wavelengths, POPAI has tried to broaden its horizons through conferences and international events featuring high-profile industry speakers of recognised professional expertise. We have also organised business trips for our associated managers in the US, the UK, France and Germany, where POPAI International’s network made possible hands-on visits to such famous chains as Whole Foods, Wegmans, Costco, WalMart and Target–veritable academies of distribution techniques and customer service.

The retail trade is one of the major drivers of a country’s economy and prosperity, even though Italy seems to have forgotten that the national treasures that are and within Venice, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Naples and Milan are all linked to the munificence of merchants that built and embellished them with incomparable works of art by great masters. It’s an eye-opening reason to keep the fire and ambition that move people to great enterprise alive.

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POPAI WORLDWIDE Members: 1,520 (in 19 countries)

POPAI IN ITALY

Popai Italia today is the country’s leading national association for the promotion of point-of-purchase business culture in all its facets.

The Popai network provides its membes with channels of information, comunication and interaction for developing know-how, networking and growth in the marketing & retail business community.

Advertising

Publishing

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Members: Turnover: Employees:

218 â‚Ź170 Billion 120,000

Food & Beverage

Distribution

Banking

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Consumer Goods

Consulting & Research

Cosmetics Personal Care

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Furnishing

Other Services

Real Estate

Telecommunications

Transportation

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Secular olive trees with their typically twisting trunks.

THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

THE FATS WE ARE FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

99

The fats we eat, technically called ‘lipids’, are either naturally present in our foods or have been added to them, the source of the latter enrichment being by-products of vegetable processing, the usual kind, or less often of slaughterhouse waste like suet. Ours is a tour, if you will, of fat city and its inhabitants.

The historical record, whether of written documents or of evidence gleaned from ar-

chaeological sources, tells us that humans have exploited fatty plant and animal substances for millennia as key components of their, and our, dietary regime. The fats of animals killed in the hunt or of nuts and seeds gathered from plants were initially the primary sources of these substances in human diets. The adipose tissues of animal prey also proved useful in another way for they could

Young olive trees with canopies pruned to a double-cone shape.

100 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

preserve the meat of the kill and thus helped to provide a larder for survival in times of food scarcity. Put in a more technical sense, when it was necessary to consume the fat too, the extra intake of calories made the level of glucose in the blood rise above its usual threshold and triggered a mechanism that stored the surplus as fatty deposits in body tissue.

In all likelihood, this ‘larder’ mechanism played a very important role in natural selection early on and it is still active, albeit a somewhat unfortunate circumstance for many people today who are grappling with weight problems through special diets and perspiring workouts in the gym. Table 1 shows worldwide production of fatty plant substances used in human diets.

101 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

It is immediately obvious that most of our oils are derived from processing either the seed or fruit of plants. What is rather sur-

prising for anyone living in countries of the Mediterranean Basin, where olive oil is the historical benchmark, is the quantities of the

Table 1. Average annual production (million tons) of 17 commercial oils and fats over five-year windows together with future projections [1]

FATTY SUBSTANCE

YEAR 1976/80

1986/90

1996/00

2006/10*

2016/20*

Soya

11,2

15,3

22,8

30,4

37,1

Palm

3,7

9,2

17,9

29,2

40,8

Rapeseed (canola oil)

3,0

7,5

12,6

17,5

22,2

Sunflower

4,2

7,2

9,1

12,5

16,6

Lauric Oils (palm kernel)**

3,3

4,3

5,4

7,5

9,6

Other vegetable oil**

10,0

12,3

14,9

18,0

21,6

Animal fats

17,2

19,9

20,7

24,3

27,9

* Projection figures from: Oil World 2020. ISTA Mielke GmbH, Hamburg, Germany, 1999. ** Palm kernel oil is from the palm kernel, palm oil from the fruit pulp, coconut from the kernel. Other vegetable oil: from cotton, peanut, sesame, corn, olive, linen and castor seed.

Display of olive oils probably enriched with aromatic herbs.

102 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

Shelled peanuts.

103 02 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM paolo VEGETABLE inglese OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Il destino Giovanni in una Lercker promessa

Typical display of oil ‘kernels’ found at artisanal markets.

various oils produced commercially. Lest we forget, however, even in a country like Italy olive oil, of which it is the biggest consumer (Table 2), amounts to only about half of all fatty substances, 25% being of animal origin and the rest of other plant sources. In fact, the quantity of olive oil Italy imports from other Mediterranean producers amounts to just about what it produces and is then exported throughout the world, though unfortunately most is incorrectly labelled as Italian oil.

Origin and use of non-olive oils As Table 1 also makes plainly, and curiously, evident, most of the oils we consume come from the soya and palm plant, roughly produced in equal quantities although palmist will soon outpace soy oil. It’s important to try to see the whys and wherefores of this situation. In point of fact, oil is not the primary product of soya processing but a by-product of meal extraction, which has 20-25% more protein content than the seed meal. Soy meal today provides the pro-

104 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

teins contained in livestock feed that had once been supplied by other kinds of meal –a kind of cake made from the fat left over from meat production and that from the mass processing of tinned sardines in and exported by Chile. Yet, as feed, both of these meals were often malodorous and less than appetizing for livestock.

Yet there is a problem even with oil in soy meal. Like all polyunsaturated oils, it is subject to rapid oxidative degradation, not to mention the fact that it is produced in com-

mercial quantities far in excess of what humans can possibly consume in their dietary regimes. That’s why the polyunsaturated are the cheapest of all food oils, even to produce, and somehow have to be put to use somewhere. Until a few years ago large quantities, mostly soy and to a lesser extent rape, sunflower and maize (corn) oils, were used in the mass production of hydrogenated fats and margarine. Today, however, hydrogenation is used less and less since bans or legal limits have been imposed by many countries

105 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

Palm tree grown for palm-oil fruit (nuts). Foreground, clusters can contain up to about 500 fruit.

Traditional olive press with manual grindstone for crushing.

106 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

Table 2. Leading producers and consumers of olive oil (Wikipedia) PRODUCTION IN TONS (2010)*

PRODUCTION % (2010)

CONSUMPTION (2005)**

ANNUAL CONSUMPTION PER CAPITA (KG)***

World

3,269,248

100%

100%

0.43

Spain

1,487,000

45.5%

20%

13.62

Italy

548,500

16.8%

30%

12.35

Greece

352,800

10.8%

9%

23.7

Syria

177,400

5.4%

3%

7

Morocco

169,900

5.2%

2%

11.1

Turkey

161,600

4.9%

2%

1.2

Tunisia

160,100

4.9%

2%

5

Portugal

66,600

2.0%

2%

1.8

Algeria

33,600

1.0%

2%

7.1

Other

111,749

3.5%

28%

1.18

COUNTRY

* FAOSTAT Crops processed 2010 data for olive oil. ** United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Site. *** California and World Olive Oil Statistics at UC Davis.

Olive shoots with green and pale purple-coloured (veraison) fruit.

107 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

Bottles of oil on display, probably in an Asian market, whose illustrated labels clearly mark them as peanut oil.

because of the trans isomeric components typical of hydrogenated fats, or trans fats, that pose a health risk to consumers.

Palm fat has seen rapid market growth because advances in production techniques have made it possible to derive a fluid and a solid component, endowing it with a versatility that is especially useful in producing baked goods and creamy spreads. Though more expensive to make, it has replaced hydrogenated fats, even in margarine, and is used among other things in the manufacture of biodiesel fuel, which has led to greatly expanding acreage of crop plantations.

Palm fat is also being blamed for the rising

rate of child obesity for its use in producing the so-called snacks that are prominently advertised on TV. While there is much obfuscation of facts and seemingly no end to debate in this regard, the root of the issue is most likely the more sedentary life-style of children today, who spend an inordinate number of hours watching TV while eating those snacks.

The oils of rapeseed (canola) sunflower and corn are also employed widely. The plant of canola, for example, is grown for its oil-rich seeds (30-35%) mainly in Canada and countries of eastern Europe. Sunflower seed is even richer in oil –50-55%– and

108 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

Close-up of sunflower heads (capitula) with hulled seeds in the dark central part.

special equipment can separate the kernel from the flower head, or capitulum, for ‘over-ripe’ harvesting, i.e. when the plants blacken and their heads slump in the field.

Corn kernels on the other hand are poor oil carriers, about 4% in content, but the oil is extracted from them nonetheless because the extraction meal is high in very clean starch for manufacturing purposes and for producing isomerised hydrolysates for use as sweetening agents that are cheaper than sucrose.

The BMJ (formerly The British Medical Journal and later BMJ) published a selective review not too long ago of the most reliable

research in the very extensive medical and scientific literature on the effects of food lipids on human health. Any of the convictions that had held sway over the consumption of certain foods proved to be unfounded.

Here is a summary look at the findings. [A more recent, highly condensed article in the same debunking vein appeared in the Italian weekly L’Espresso.]

- Fatty substances eaten in normal amounts are not correlated to heart disease or to colon-rectal tumours.

- When fatty substances rich in saturated fatty acids are eaten in normal quantities, they do not correlate to heart disease, al-

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Typical tapered-bottom amphorae for ship transport of liquids like oil and wine.

though consumption by the elderly should be moderated.

- Fatty substances rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids, the much publicised ‘w-3 and w-6 fatty acids’ found in up to high amounts in all seed oils, should be consumed in limited quantities because of their noted susceptibility to oxidation.

Recommended amounts of w-3 are about 140 milligrams per day, a quantity contained in about 20 grams of olive oil (at 0.7% w-3), or two soupspoons; w-3 ranges from 4.5-14% in seed oils, sufficient for consumption from 1 to 3.1 grams of oil per day. Higher quantities of polyunsaturated oils might be problematic because of the potential oxidative effects they can induce.

So why the half-truths, fact-twisting chicanery or even deceit in calls to lower intake of fats rich in saturated fatty acids and higher intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids that were officially reported in US government publications in 1977? The answer lies in the standard American diet unduly tipped towards the consumption of foods of animal origin that are richer in saturated fats. In effect, by putting the blame on saturated fatty acids, official thinking wanted to coax consumers towards a drastic reduction of these foods while, in all likelihood, attempting to reduce health problems like obesity and other diseases linked to such high-energy diets.

The repercussions beyond US borders were

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Steers in a barn.

of heart disease, as Artemis Simopoulos has underscored. In point of fact, the consumption that is so widespread today of seed oils did not even exist 120 years ago because the ‘Industrial Revolution’ had yet to develop the technology to extract them.

Why is oil from olives better than oils from other plant sources?

Extra Virgin Olive Oil is not only more stable and less susceptible to oxidation, but, when of good quality, it even stimulates your appetite and meets the biochemical and nutritional demands of most consumers. And, in a process stating from oleic acid, it can help us control our waistlines by promoting the formation of oleoylethanolamide, a substance that more readily transmits the feel-

soon evident. Even in countries whose dietary habits were a far cry from those in America, the new mantra was disseminated by nutritionists and food experts to their populations without bothering to see about adapting these suggestions in the light of their own life-styles. And, as can be expected in such cases, the door was opened to promote fatty substances like seed oils and vegetable margarine as alternatives, say, to olive oil and butter. Though its dynamics remain unclear, the situation in the US has changed not a jot since then, whereas for just over a century now the consumption of polyunsaturated oils has posted a jump worldwide in tandem with the upswing of the availability of polyunsaturated fats and

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ing of satiety to the brain than all other oils or food fats.

What’s the importance of Extra Virgin Olive Oil as food?

To begin with, the lipids it contains have a high nutritional value and excellent palate-pleasing sensory properties. Particularly notable too is the stability factor it embodies. By composition, it is stable when stored and bottled, when used as an ingredient in cooking, and it even enhances the stability of many foods it is added to.

What does stability of a fatty substance or oil actually mean?

Simply put, the term means the power of the substance to check rapid deterioration so as not to generate other substances that can adversely affect consumption like disagreeable tastes, odours and, more importantly, components harmful to health. Oxidation of the unsaturated components of fatty substances is the main problem, and, although free acidity too can increase during storage and prompt faster oxidative degradation, this is less of a problem.

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Maize ears drying in the open under the sun.

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Olive cultivar whose fruit is slightly curved at the tip.

What problems does this oxidation create?

Oxidation targets unsaturated fatty acids and proceeds more rapidly the more unsaturated these acids are. This process generates oxygenated substances that cause the disagreeable flavours and odours our senses find so off-putting. The real problem, however, is the oxidation of cholesterol because it prompts the formation of oxygenated substances that in turn generate health-endangering components such as arteriosclerosis, cytotoxicity and cancerous agents.

Why is Extra Virgin Olive Oil so important in reducing oxidative problems?

First of all, it is much less prone to oxidation than all other oils because it contains fewer polyunsaturated fatty acids and, more importantly still, powerful antioxidants that keep oxidation at bay over time. Important properties in their own right, they are even more so when they meet matching molecules via ingestion in living organisms like our bodies.

References [1] F.D. Gunstone, “Food Application of Lipids”, in Food Lipids: Chemistry, Nutrition, and Biotechnology, Second Edition, Ed. Casmir C. Akoh and D. B. Min, CRC Press, Chap. 24, 2002.

[2] G. Verdi, La rivincita dei grassi., L’Espresso, 10 luglio 2014, 92-97.

[3] A. Ascherio, E.B. Rimm, E.L. Giovannucci, D. Spiegelman, S. Meir, W.C. Willett, “Dietary fat and risk of coronary heart disease in men: cohort follow up study in the United States”, The BMJ 1996; 313:84.

[4] A.P. Simopoulos, “Omega-3 fatty acids in health and disease and in growth and development”, Am. J. Clin. Nutr., 1991; 54, 438-463.

Giovanni Lercker

114 THE FATS WE ARE–FROM VEGETABLE OILS TO FOOD LIPIDS Giovanni Lercker

FROM THE LAND TO THE GLASS: A GREAT ITALIAN STORY For over 160 years Genagricola has followed the vocation of the land and today represents the largest Italian agrifood company.

A heritage of experience and research that supplies the wine group Le Tenute di Genagricola: 760 hectares of vineyards, 5 Italian regions, 8 estates, over 100 wines.

Today the story is renewed.

GENAGRICOLA. THE LAND HAS DRIVEN US SINCE 1851.

DISCOVER THE WORLD OF TENUTE DI GENAGRICOLA

VINITALy – HALL 4, STAND C7-D7 letenutedigenagricola.it

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The Promised Land, the Land of Canaan, the Holy Land, , , British Protectorate, Παλαιστίνη, the State of Palestine, the State of Israel, the Kingdom of Jordan–how many (too many?) names can we use for a part of the world that embodies more history than any other of its size? And how many more will be needed?

Torrents of words, from the holiest, from the word God, to the most ignoble, have been penned in this Land and about it–this Land in fortune and promise, rent apart, abandoned, recovered, lost again, of blood, far too much, shed for thousands of years.

What else can possibly be added?

Israel and Jordan and, between them but not

Wadi Rum is the historic land of Bedouin tribes and symbol of the exploits of Thomas E. Lawrence ‘of Arabia’, who made it his headquarters for the conquest of Aqaba.

Today it is a protected area of extraordinary historical value for its landscape and natural beauty.

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Moses got his pisgah glimpse of the Promised Land. It was on the banks of the Jordan River that ‘he who descends’ was baptized the Christ. Mount Hor rising behind Petra, the Rose City, in the land of the Nabataeans is where Aaron went to die. Jerusalem is the Holy City, the City Eternal, where everything appears projected to the vanishing

of them, Palestine, the occupied territories, are a journey through time, memory, conscience, even political, of each of us.

Israel and Jordan, here in a few pictures, are united for in reality it’s impossible to separate the destiny of these lands and the peoples living there despite the borders and barbed wire. It was from Mount Nebo that

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The cotton or woolen kefďŹ yeh or headgear: it is typically Jordanian if red check, and Palestinian if black check, like that worn by Arafat.

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point at its gates, under its walls. It’s the City of Kings, of three religions, of spices and wondrous variety of cuisines. Shimmering and intense, Jerusalem belongs to you and, walking about, wandering within it, you find you belong to it. Walking along streets that have seen it all has something of the incredible about it.

Yet it’s no jaunt to be taken lightly. Israel and Jordan are not places for cliché-ridden tourism for they retain the powerful pull of a journey in the sense that you cannot help but come face to face with very fundamental questions.

It’s a land of ‘walls’. The Western, Wailing, Wall, of course, icon and site of absolute faith of Judaism, separates the holy precinct of one and the other religion but where Jews cannot enter. There’s the later wall but no less imposing and tragic that separates Bethlehem, Jericho and the Palestinian territories, from Israel. Its graffiti tell of sorrows impossible to bear, of a divide that must be closed. And only 3-4 kilometres from the heart of Jerusalem it separates the birthplace of Christ from the sites of His Calvary, death and resurrection.

And how does one not feel the ‘pinch of salt’ on the shores of the Dead Sea, or not remain breathless climbing the Snake Trail as it wends and winds up 400 metres through rocks and rubble to the Masada mesa? Here Roman troops under Lucius Flavius Silva built a siege ramp, which is still there as witness to Roman power, that enabled them to place towers under the fortress and breach its walls with battering rams. When the long siege ended and the Romans finally entered the fortress proper in 73 CE, they were greeted not by armed resistance but by a silent hecatomb: the collective suicide of the Jewish garrison of Sicarii who had resisted the power of Rome even after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple. It is a tradition that even today is alive in the Israeli armed forces

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The grafďŹ ti on the wall separating the Palestinian territories from Israel are on the side of the former and are real works of resistance art that have attriacted artists from all over the world.

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Every Middle Eastern marketplace is a riot of colours, flavours and smells. Jerusalem is no exception. Depending on the neighbourhood, its souqs are Arab, Aremenian, Semitic. Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market is a sight not to be missed.

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It’s a journey that’s a must in another way too, for the culinary culture of this land has an extraordinary role to play. Here the flavours and fragrances unite rather than divide, peace and sharing come into their own, eminently fulfilled as cultures come together rather than clash, and are the better for it. You might even say that if the peoples of this land were to begin living together, the starting point would surely be at table, the communality of their food culture.

First of all comes Pita, the Queen of Middle Eastern cooking. It’s a pocketed flatbread made of wheat flour, water, salt sourdough or natural starter yeast. While not of Semitic origin, it’s certainly right at home in Israel and, when you add ingredients typical of Arabic cuisine like falafel and hummus, it becomes synonymous with Israeli cuisine.

There’s something really unique about falafel in Israel and all religions have a stake in it.

No scandal involved here. Usually made of ground chickpeas or fava beans with garlic, onion and coriander, the little balls are perfect with hummus, chickpea paste, olive oil, onion and tahini, sesame paste whose origins are lost in antiquity. You can also fill the Pita pocket tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and pickled vegetables as desired.

Israeli cuisine combines local dishes of native to the country and those brought to the country by Jews of the Diaspora. Since the founding of the modern State of Israel, its cuisine has constantly adopted elements of various kinds of Jewish and regional foods like those of the Mizrahi, Sephardic and Ashkenazy communities. Many of these foods are also common to Mediterra-

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Felafel and hummus in Jerusalem. Ground chickpea or fava bean flour, like olives, are part and parcel of the Mediterranesan diet.

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The Dome of the Rock crowns the mosque built in the 7th century on the Temple Mount (Al Haram al sharif for Muslims); the site where Salomon’s Temple, destroyed by the Babylonians, and the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, once stood. According to theTorah, it housed the Ark of the Covenant, and for Muslims it is the site where Mohammed ascended into heaven.

chants, dried fruit and nuts, kosher butchers, cheeses, cakes and pastry galore, choice fresh fruit, spices, juices, olives, shawarma, baklava and music. Over there, just off Jaffa Street, don’t miss Azura, the heart of the marketplace. If it’s the best in Middle Eastern food you want, you’ve found it. At the hub and in the hubbub of the market, next to the hurried rolls of dice players, eat, listen and preen your nose–you’re in Jerusalem in all its glory. Later, if you want some truly unique tea, and then climb to the roofs of Jerusalem a few steps from the Holy Sepulchre, while listening to its bells, the lamentations of the Wailing Wall and the call of the Muezzin at the Qubbat al-S. akhra, the Temple of the Dome of the Mount, and Al Aqsa (the two extraordinary monumental structures of al-H.aram al-Sharif) and go to the

nean and Middle Easter cuisines, including falafel, hummus and msabbaha, where the chickpeas are whole rather than ground to the paste of hummus. Shakshouka, labneh and za’atar have also become widely popular in Israel.

Kosher dishes and customary culinary ingredients for Shabbat and various Jewish feasts, of course, round out the menu. Tel Aviv today is gradually developing a style of its own, one proper to an international city but with strong regional accents–a veritable ‘Jewish fusion’ of styles of extraordinary delight.

If you want to immerse yourself in the colours, but more so in the aromas, fragrances and flavours of Jerusalem, then the place to go is the Mahane Yehuda Market in West Jerusalem. It’s incredible criss-cross of mer-

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The Negev is the desert where Ben Gurion, the father of the State of Israel, is buried. Once populated by the Nabataeans, it became a symbol of the Israeli agricultural and technological revolution after the founding of the State of Israel.

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Uadi Rum.

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Uadi Rum.

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there to the gates of Aqaba, the route to the port city T.E. Lawrence captured and where he became known as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’.

The red sand, tea in the desert, sunrises and sunsets combine to conjure a time and space that are truly relative. This is Wadi Rum. You never really return from these lands.

You belong to them because you always go back to that ineffable cradle of civilisation, without peace, where mankind learnt to be human, ever in cognizance and self-recognition of the mystery of life.

Austrian Hospice, which was commissioned

by Franz Josef, the last Habsburg emperor, who was finally granted the right to build a residence in the Holy Land behind the Third Station of the Via Dolorosa. It’s a place that’s spellbinding, time-suspending magic in a timeless city.

Now, finally, comes our appointment with Petra and the desert of Wadi Rum. Words will never quite do the trick, you have to go there. The ‘rose-red’ city, Petra is one of the world’s wonders, ancient capital of the Nabataeans, who vanished from human sight and memory centuries ago after the Romans founded the safer and more convenient Palmyra, which drew the caravan trade away from Petra. Petra returned to note in 1812 thanks to the description of Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.

It’s only a few hours’ travel in the desert from

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