Specials

 

This is what emerges from our interviews with Rosario Procino, Northeast America Manager for the Academia Barilla, and Marco Oberto, a Piedmont Barolo exporter, and his American importer Eric Munson, Head of Dancing Bear Cellars.

 

Rosario Procino told us about his experience with the Academia Barilla. Graduating with a degree in Communication in Naples, Italy, he started his career in the U.S. with Telecom Italia. While working in New York, he was approached by Academia Barilla for some consulting jobs, eventually becoming the company’s Manager for Sales and Marketing in North America. Barilla was founded in1877 as a bread and pasta shop in Parma, a Northern Italian city in the Emilia-Romagna Region, and is still a family-owned company. From the start, superior quality of its products and ingredients has been vital, and Barilla pasta is now the number one pasta brand in Italy and the world. The mission of Academia Barilla is to protect, develop, and promote the art of Italian gastronomy and culture around the world. It elaborates on the Italian culinary art by celebrating traditions, nutritional innovation, and promoting the knowledge and the enjoyment of Italian regional cuisines.

 

Products, courses, publishing and consulting services provided by Academia Barilla serve as the key roads towards fulfilling this mission.

As one of EmiliaRomagna’s most historic cities, Parma has contributed to the region’s vibrant gastronomic tradition so remarkably that it has been identified as one of Europe's greatest food capitals: it’s the home of Parmigiano-Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma. In  close vicinity, you will find Culatello di Zibello, Salame di Parma, Salame al Finocchio and Balsamic Vinegar of Modena. Undoubtedly, this makes the perfect base for exciting Italian culinary tours and cultural excursions.

 

Academia Barilla's Gastronomic Library offers much more than recipe books. Its volumes illuminate links between the kitchen and politics, cuisine and culture, and even between religion and eating.  Others describe the role of cuisine in artists' and writers' lives and works. Housed within the headquarters of Academia Barilla in Parma, this Gastronomic Library provides more than 7,500 volumes of unparalleled resources for professional chefs in search of inspiration and for gastronomy enthusiasts curious about the history of food culture in Italy and abroad.

 

Another means of action for the Academia is its partnership with companies (distributors of fine foods, restaurants and specialty food stores, tour operators and travel agents) dedicated to top quality foods, culinary arts, Italian lifestyle, and overall excellence in diverse fields. In this regard, Rosario Procino explains how he proceeds in his job: Academia Barilla financially supports small Italian producers who aren’t able to promote their unique products, both due to lack of money and problems concerning brand strength. The Barilla brand becomes the main vehicle through which these small entrepreneurs penetrate the American market, offering the consumer a good product known for its brand and quality. This perfect liaison is reached at the end of a long and patient effort towards the education of both importers and consumers, encouraging them to use a reliable brand associated with high quality products. “Academia Barilla – says Mr. Procino – has got its own long-term strategy, centered on an exceptional final product, distinct from all the other comparable brands. It’s a marketing job dedicated to the awareness of what is delicious and authentic, by means of food and wine courses offered in the Parma School”.

 

From Emilia Romagna to Piedmont, the main concept remains the same. We continue our conversation on the winning trio, “high quality product-brand-consumer education”, with Marco Oberto and Eric Munson, respectively Italian exporter and American importer of Barolo wine, produced by the Ciabot Berton enterprise.

 

Ciabot Berton is Luigi Oberto’s company – Marco (oenologist) and Paola (agronomist)’s father – located in La Morra, in the heart of the Barolo production zone. “The area cultivated with vineyards covers about 12 hectares, 8 of which are cultivated with Nebbiolo da Barolo and the remainder with Barbera and Dolcetto”, Marco Oberto says. “We only produce a small quantity of wine but we provide it to distributors and to private clients from all over the world”. Notwithstanding the small dimension, the company is able to export. But how can all this be possible? According to Marco, “the special vineyards and land characteristics, the young and dynamic entrepreneurial spirit associated with a classic wine like Barolo, makes it a brand that speaks for itself. This year my company decided not to produce Barolo: it was a drastic and profitless decision to preserve the high quality and the name of such an appreciable and renowned wine”.

 

The unique quality and flavor of Barolo wine alone convinced Eric Munson, once involved in Wall Street finance, to follow his own passion: the wine that gave birth to his business project, Dancing Bear Cellars, Importer and Distributor of Handcrafted Wines. “Dancing Bear Cellars arose from a passion for fine, hand-crafted wines. Each wine is selected using careful analysis, rigorous standards and is tasted to clarify its unique character. Producers provide us technical data which we use to compose a specifications sheet that outlines the make-up of the wine. Most importantly, the wine has to provide the consumer with some entertainment. Each bottle of wine we offer for sale, we have tasted, and we own ourselves. This quality portfolio of wine is designed to be consumer-friendly, with different varietals and styles of wines across different price points for virtually any occasion. Both on-premise and off-premise establishments will benefit from items out of this carefully selected list. Whether at an elegant restaurant, the country club or a bottle to bring home, Dancing Bear Cellars has the right product to meet your client needs”, says Mr. Munson. The truth is that there has been, and there is going to be, an increase in the number of people, especially the youngest generation, who drink wine, good wine. “We- adds Munson- emphasize on those consumers through an effective marketing and promotional campaign that promotes good wines, through teaching and sommelier courses, events and wine tastings”. Mark Levy, a Dancing Bear employee, thoughtfully concludes: “It is that small quantity of informed consumers who make the quality.”

 

(Edited by Eleonora Mazzucchi)

Italian version published in "Oggi 7" (05/18/2008)