Taste 2019: Florence celebrates Italian culinary excellence.

An extraordinary journey through the food excellences of the Peninsula and the diversities of food culture, with forays into the lifestyle and design related to cuisine and its surroundings: Pitti Taste is back, from Saturday, March 9 to Monday, March 11, 2019 at the Stazione Leopolda in Florence.

Taste, now in its fourteenth edition, is both a business platform and a container of trends and ideas in the contemporary culinary scene, becoming increasingly the unmissable event for industry operators and the most passionate food lovers. This edition, with a focus on bread, presents the innovations of almost 400 companies - a selection of the most qualified Italian realities in contemporary food & wine, alongside objects of food & kitchen design, clothing and technical kitchen equipment. Of course, there will also be super guests like the three-Michelin-star chefs Massimo Bottura from Osteria Francescana in Modena and Massimiliano Alajmo from Le Calandre in Rubano (Padua). Both will share their social projects with the attendees. 

Taste 2019: also featuring the partner companies of Spaghetti e Mandolino in Florence.

Several realities you will find at Taste 2019 are part of the Spaghetti e Mandolino family. It couldn’t be any other way for a portal that aims year after year to bring the Italian food and wine excellences directly to your home. Let’s discover together which S&M partners will be at Taste 2019: 32 Via dei Birrai, Corte Luceoli, Fattorie Fiandino, L'artigiano della Nduja, La Casearia Carpenedo, Luigi Guffanti, Sabadì, Sapori Vesuviani, Stella Biscotti (Panificio Stella) and Tartuflanghe. These are true excellences, companies ready to showcase their jewels to the thousands of visitors and industry operators who will flock to Florence from March 9 to 11. 

Taste 2019: Beer and artisan cheeses.

Participating in Taste 2019 means becoming part of the niche of quality Italian products. This is the case for 32 Via dei Birrai, a reality founded by three friends in June 2006 in Pederobba (TV). The beers of 32 Via dei Birrai are artisanal products made in small quantities and never standardized. Among the realities we support that will be present at Taste with their cheeses are La Casearia Carpenedo, Luigi Guffanti, and Fattorie Fiandino. The latter produces the Gran Kinara, a cheese that expresses a beautiful florality and a delicate taste of acacia honey. A creamy product on the palate because it is highly soluble.
Fattorie Fiandino are the first in Italy to extract vegetable rennet from a plant called Cynara cardunculus, which they use to produce this great hard cheese for grating, similar to grana.
Luigi Guffanti has been aging his cheeses in Arona, in the province of Novara, since 1876. This is a reality specializing in mountain cheeses such as Blu del Moncenisio and Bettelmatt.
At La Casearia di Carpanedo, award-winning and famous cheeses are produced. Among these, the celebrated “Ubriaco” cheese is worth mentioning. Today, Casearia Carpenedo is at the forefront in cheese aging, a technique that transforms cheese into something special through natural fermentation processes. A recommendation? The Ubriaco d'Amore cheese with Amarone della Valpolicella  that encapsulates all the taste of the Lessini mountains combined with the boldness of the great Veronese red wine.

 

Taste 2019: Visciole, ‘nduja, chocolate, pomodorino del piennolo, sweets, and truffles in Florence!

On the road that connects the city of Urbino to the Adriatic Sea, at a certain point you arrive in the Marche region and encounter an ancient medieval village: Cantiano. Its name has become famous worldwide for its extraordinary sour cherries and visciole. At Taste 2019, the Tommasini family from Corte Luceioli will bring this delicacy: the Cantiano visciole, a product that brings with it a pleasantness and acidity that makes them particularly balanced.
From Umbria, we head down to Calabria to find L'artigiano dello ‘Nduja, that is, Luigi Caccamo. His nduja is produced with locally sourced pork and chili, with no added preservatives, and the processing occurs in Spilinga. We go even further down to Sicily, specifically to Modica (Ragusa), where we find Sabadì and its precious chocolate.
The chocolate from Modica or Modican chocolate is obtained from a particular "cold" processing of chocolate that excludes the conching phase. From the one with lemon peels to the one with habanero chili, passing through an extra dark, do not miss the chance to get to know this delicacy.
From Sicily, we move to Campania to visit Sapori Vesuviani, famous for the pomodorino del piennolo from which a great passata is obtained, and then we continue with the sbrisolona, a typical mantovan dessert made by Panificio Stella.
Our tour up and down Italy concludes in Alba, where Tartuflanghe, the company of Domenica Bertolusso and Beppe Montanaro, is located. They began their activity in the world of truffles in 1968, marketing fresh truffles from Piedmont, and today they are a great successful reality.
If you don’t have time to travel across Italy and visit these producers in their lands, the ideal choice will be to go to Taste Florence 2019!

 

Francesco Scuderi

S&M