Celebrate Slow Wine and Slow Food, Terra Madre Day at Swirl!

Terra Madre Day, December 10th, marks the anniversary of the founding of the Slow Food movement in Italy in 1986 by a passionate guy named Carlo Petrini.  It's a day when  food communities and Slow Food chapters around the world celebrate eating locally and sustainable local food production in more than a 1,000 events: collective meals, community festivals, protests, workshops for children, excursions to producers and much more are held to promote local food traditions and demonstrate the Slow Food philosophy of good, clean and fair food to communities, media and decision makers. This year the Slow Food NOLA event will be hosted at Swirl where we are teaming up with our friends from Fat Falafel for an evening of Slow Wine and Slow Food!  

So just what exactly does that mean? Slow Food publishes a great Italian wine guide called "Slow Wine" in support of producers who not only make great wine but who are also passionate about their bond with the land and their choice of cultivation and cellar techniques - favoring those who implement ecologically sustainable wine growing and winemaking practices.  Slow Food panels of judges visited over 400 wineries and have compiled reviews of over 3000 wines. So our role in tonight's event will be to serve wines at the bar from producers highlighted in the book for their support of good, clean and fair.

Fat Falafel will be supporting another initiative of Slow Food by preparing a dish using a food that is part of the Ark of Taste program.   Slow Food's Ark of Taste is a catalog of over 200 delicious foods that you’ve maybe never heard of, because, for one reason or another, they’ve been cast aside by the industrial food system.  So besides all of the other great stuff they already serve on the truck, Gavin and Teresa of Fat Falafel will be preparing a special dish on the menu specifically for the event.  A portion of the proceeds from Fat Falafel's sales of that one delicious item and the bar sales from our 5 special Slow Wines, will be donated to Slow Food.

And just in case you want to know, Swirl represents many of the producers in the book and you can look for the Slow Food snail on the bottles to indicate which ones are considered worthy of the Slow Wine snail of approval!  Check out the list below and come to the shop on Tuesday where 5 of the following wineries will be represented on our special by the glass menu! The hard part is going to be picking 5 from this amazing list.

Italy's Slow Wine Producers currently available at Swirl:

Allegrini - Veneto

Occhipinti - Sicilia

Terlano - Alto Adige

Caggiano - Campania

Librandi - Calabria

Terre Nere - Sicilia

Foradori - Trentino

Velenosi - Marche

Donnafugata - Sicilia

Planeta - Sicilia

Gaja - Piemonte, Toscana

I Vigneri - Sicilia

Travaglini - Piemonte

Le Morette - Veneto

La Spinetta - Toscana

Boscarelli - Toscana

Bartolo Mascarello - Piemonte