Oscar Farinetti flopped with FICO, the world’s Disneyland of food in Bologna. On the other hand, there are many small producers who produce excellence without the visibility of the media, in the slowness and industriousness of the Italian provinces. Here is one of the most interesting
The antiFICO/Farinetti exists and his name is Antonio Palmieri, he lives in the Piana del Sele (Salerno), and is a dairy entrepreneur, also with a moustache, but who contrasts the nervous speech of the Turin Oscar with the acute listening of the thinker of Magna Graecia.
If Oscar says that it all depends on how you describe the product, on the marketing, Antonio repeats that if the product is worth it there is almost no need for marketing, it travels alone, from word of mouth. If Oscar markets the excellence of others at amazing prices, Antonio creates it at the right price within an exclusive context. If the first proclaims that he will bring in the Disneyland of Bologna food millions (never seen) of Americans, Germans, French, the latter really does it and in silence: it is not difficult to see tables of American girls and boys or Steve Jobs’ wife and children return to the yacht parked on the coast with the boxes of his mozzarella.
A restaurant, a dairy, a yogurt-ice cream shop, a leather workshop, 18 quintals of milk produced every day, 600 buffaloes milked and brushed with robots as if they were queens. Each hoax has a microchip and is meticulously followed during processing. The milk used is only produced internally and analyzed in real time because quality starts from the producer who enjoys the good things he produces before others.
And then 75 employees who smile with full faces when they see Antonio Palmieri pass by. Here is the Vannulo estate, in a southern area where to have from a private individual a salary of 1500 euros per month, as the kids from the South say, “‘ara ittà or sanghe, yes ‘na specie’ and slaves” (you have to shed blood, you’re a kind of slave), a work environment like this is no small thing.
Antonio Palmieri passes him easily as he walks with a Panama hat on his head, the welcoming smile and the curious look of someone who knows he can learn even from the stones he stumbles over. Among the wisterias and hibiscus that adorn the estate, Antonio has been able to build a true journey of the senses in which the visitor first remains enchanted as in a fairy talea, then intrigued and amused by the industrious village that produces and churns out, cuts, sews and milks, until he finally gets lost in the pleasure of conviviality and taste, among the many products and delicacies he can try. “If you don’t surround yourself with beauty, what’s the point of all this?”, he repeats thoughtfully.
Every morning people line up to have his mozzarella, but only after having booked because they run out immediately. Two 5-star restaurants, one in Florence and the other in Milan, asked him for them. He thanks respectfully but refuses. “If you want quality products you have to go to the territories, this is the philosophy I believe in. You have to taste them as soon as they are made.” It’s zero kilometer mozzarella. Just as a peach loses its taste if consumed after being transported in the fridge for hundreds of kilometers, so mozzarella has its goodness if enjoyed near the cheesemaker. This is how we can keep the flag of Italian agricultural producers flying high, those who reach the pinnacle of taste, with quality, and who don’t even have the fanfare of the mainstream media and the support of large-scale retail trade.
“Excellence is only achieved with limited, highly controlled productions, as soon as you expand to mass production the quality inevitably drops, there is little that can be done”, repeats Palmieri, “we need to find the right balance. Everyone tries. You also earn a lot but you don’t have to be greedy.”
Ironically, the estate, founded in 1988, was built on land that everyone said was “worth nothing”, not fertile for any cultivation, hence the name Vannulo.
Slow biz vs Fast biz. The pleasure of slowly tasting unique foods versus the speed of mass consumption of standardized or fake organic products. With his life’s work, Palmieri has demonstrated that the credibility of a brand is built slowly and over time, there is no other way.
And then Italy is already a whole playground of taste and beauty, from North to South, you just need to want to discover it.
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