An Italy of taste, an Italy of flavour, an Italy of culture and ancient traditions that have been handed down and renewed for centuries. Buonitalia´s aim is to make known and promote the great agro-industry assets of Italy, especially at the International level.
Buonitalia S.p.A is a company which was set up in July 2003 by the Ministry of Agricultural Policy and Forestry (MIPAF), together with the Institute of Services for the Agricultural Food Market (ISMEA), together with the Institute of Services for the Trade (ICE) and the National Union of the Chamber of Trade (UNIONCAMERE).
The made in Italy of quality, with its variety of flavours, of products and its unequalled history of cooking is evaluated and promoted by Buonitalia through projects and agreements which involve many institutions and companies.
Italy is a country with the highest number of known products, 585 awards amongst which are : DOC (de nomination of Controller Origin), DOCG, ( Denomination of controller an Guaranteed Origin), DOP (Denomination of Protected Origin), IGP (Protected Geographical Indication), IGT (Typical Geographical Indication). These indicate the highest quality of selected products, produced with an ability which has been handed down through generations.
But the great quality of tastes of made in Italy does not end here. Thirty-eight percent of the organic European producers are Italian and on every 10 hectares of cultivated land, 3 hectares respect BIO parameters. And Italy takes first place in Europe for the ecological label on industrial products.
Developing the demand, promoting and organising the offer, affirming a culture of food capable of promoting an infinite variety of made in Italy food products is Buonitalia´s great project.
Fabrizio Mottironi
President Buonitalia
Italy is like a spotted leopard: an appropriate definition coined a few years ago to indicate the craftsmen and industrial areas of great vitality. It is not a happy image if thinking of the name of a ferocious and spotted animal, but the idea renders clearly the concept that emerges when we look at a map of the country and the geographic localities emerge here and there with tempting goods like cheeses, sausages, pasta, sweets, jams, bread, olive oil, wines, vegetables and fruit.
A photograph of our gastronomic products of quality clearly highlights that, included in the great mass of culture that makes up Italy, it is possible to distinguish some products and because of their common characteristics, a “red” line can be drawn which unites places, men, dialects and material culture even thought geographically they may be rather distant from each other. This clearly demonstrates a food and gastronomic identity even in different cultural and territorial areas.
However it is important to underline the term “quality” when speaking about agro-industrial or gastronomic products instead of the much abused “typical” or “genuine”. These adjectives often mean nothing and do not establish if the products are subject to a quality control.
If therefore we do not think in terms of families of products (that is sausages, jams, cheeses, etc…) but in groups of products (hams, mortadelle, cow-milk cheeses, sheep’s-milk cheeses, lard, nougat, panettone, pasta, candied fruit, etc.,)
We can discern an Italy made up of “Island” territories that although distant from each other are linked by the production of foodstuffs in the same manner, raw materials and technique of manual composition used.
In places where the cultivation of hazelnuts is developed, it can in Langhe on Piedmont or Giffuni (Salerno) in Campania, but also where almonds are produced like Avola in Sicily or Tonara (Nuoro) in Sardinia, there nougat is made. These areas, although very different, in fact give life to the archipelago idea of this product, for which the world envies us. Perhaps even the technique is the same, having come about without communication from one “island” to another, almost as though through an enchantment or by magic.
The island of ham spread over this imaginary map of products are many, and also apply to sausages and cheeses, whether they are made from cow or sheep milk, but being “cheese” they are subject to many slight production variations. The cut of the hoof that distinguishes the Parma ham from the San Daniele ham or the manner in which it is aged, pressed or not. The same as the ageing in holes or in barrels, or covered with chestnut leaves which classifies the cheeses and their uses in the Romagna or the Marches.
The use of marble in ageing as occurs at Colonnata in Tuscany or glass as used in Arnad in the Valle d’Aosta can vary the flavour of products like lard. The use of pig entrails, the “gentle” one inside of a normal one for making salame.
Ways customs, rituals, working methods and microclimate all play their part in creating diversity within the whole.
It is extraordinary how the same product, or more exactly the same raw material, subjected to even minimum differences, seems to shout aloud its own territory culture, not a national or homogenous one. It is an Italy that demonstrates on the table its own place dialects, traditions and differences.
This also happens with cooked food, as for example been soup, which instead of being one, in reality is transformed into ten or a hundred different soups in different territories, all having evolved their particular variation on the initial theme which make each different in taste and aspect.
And again fresh home-made pasta that although it begins as a sheet of pasta, rolled out by a rolling pin, made with water, flour and eggs, display a truly extraordinary range. One thinks first of Emilia-Romagna which we could think of as an island for pasta; but in a area covering only a few kilometres, starting with Parma and passing to Bologna and arriving at Romagna, the anolini are transformed into tortellini and then in cappeletti, changing during the journey also into agnolotti and cappellacci. And one can add ravioli or tortellini that in their long journey from south to north, even though looking the same on the outside, or better still the “carriage” designed by the cook with her rolling-pin, contain fillings which change from area to area, simple herbs to cheese and ending up with meat.
A map of the “islands” is a clear demonstration of the richness of variety in the culture of this country that is not to be found in the other nations. For this reason it is necessary to cultivate and defend the differences in the hams, sausages, cheeses and nougats because it permits a “catalogue” of Italian things to be made, which are so varied and solicit curiosity and interest.
At one time, not so long ago, the agro-industrial and gastronomic assets of Italy were referred to as “niches”, as if wishing everything to be considered “small and beautiful”. But the niches of many products, starting with Parma ham, San Daniele ham, grana padano cheese, parmesan cheese, the many oils from the south, the center, the islands, the north, and the many varieties of cheeses, aged and fresh, to cakes (Pandoro and Panettone), etc., have become markets because the increase of quality in the productive processes have not only improved but allowed them to touch new quantitative levels without disturbing their originality.
Davide Paolini
