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Wine and Food is divided into two sections and we have tried to make navigation as easy as possible. We are adding new sections, recipes, books, and other material when possible. Marcella and Victor Hazan have been kind enough to write introductions to each section. Thanks also to the Italian Institute of Foreign Trade for providing a guide to the wine regions of Italy and their wines. Unfortunately, the Institute has not updated their since 1995, so please don't depend on what's written here. We're doing what we can to update it. We're also preparing an interview with Gelasion Gaetani d'Aragona Lovatelli, noted Italian wine expert, to give an overview of the situation with Italian wines since 1995 when Victor wrote his piece.
Italian food and the Italian way of eating (despite all those carbohydrates!) have become immensely popular throughout the world, and rightly so. After living in Italy for some years I realized why my visiting friends from the U.S.A. always raved about the food - in Italy, if it's not fresh and/or in season, it's not served. It's as simple as that. We went through the Italian version of Nouvelle Cuisine, which started some 20 years ago. My first experience was while attending the Formula One race at Imola, near Bologna. The wine company Giacobazzi invited the press to a lunch for Gilles Villeneuve, the ace driver for Ferrari. (My editor, Marcello Sabbatini, coined the slogan "Febbre di Gilles," -the Fever for Gilles - for his devoted fans.) The lunch took place at a former monastery-turned-restaurant not far from the race track, San Domenico. The owner, Giancarlo Morini, was a former banker with a passion for food, who created the restaurant in the middle of nowhere, but in a region intensely interested in food and wine. I can still almost taste the second course, a layered mousse of five different vegetables with a very light sauce which I hope I'm describing correctly. Several years later Marini teamed up with Tony May in New York and opened a branch of San Domenico there. He's no longer involved, but the restaurant still exists.
As for wine, there has been an incredible metamorphosis during the past thirty years, and Italian wines can stand with pride among the finest wines in the world. (Imagine, the Brunello di Montalcino from 2001 Casanova dei Neri was ranked as best of 100 wines in the world in 2006 by Wine Spectator. And yours truly was buying wine from them since 15 years ago. Giacomo Neri's mother used to invite me for dinner and serve Risotto al Brunello. It was delicious, but at that point I would rather drink Brunello than eat it! I still have a few bottles put away of Brunello di Montalcino from 1997, considered the best in history. I rarely drink alcohol, but I have an infallable test for wine: I'm slightly allergic to alcohol, and if the wine makes me cough, it's not a good wine. (I am serious.)
And finally, we have been granted permission to use photographs and recipes from "Mozzarella," the book (dedicated to the fabulous cheese) created by Great Britain's "Prince" of mozzarella, and our cousin (by marriage). Francesco Moncada di Paternò.
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Wine and Food is a guide to the best of Italian wine and food. Pages are constantly updated and new sections added when relevant. We welcome your suggestions. For your questions PLEASE try our Search Engine before writing. 
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