Eleonora Cozzella and Monica Caradonna, journalists specialized in the food and wine sector, will be among the teachers of the prestigious So Wine So Food master.
A real parterre de rois will welcome future food and wine critics enrolled in the So Wine So Food master in collaboration with IUL. Among the excellent names of the teaching staff are Eleonora Cozzella and Monica Caradonna, well-known names in the food and wine journalism of the Bel Paese.
The module that will see Eleonora Cozzella as a teacher will focus on learning writing techniques and journalistic communication applied to the world of food and wine. The aim of the course will be to provide the right techniques for writing the article and food and wine criticism.
Monica Caradonna, on the other hand, will focus on a journey to discover the evolution of the publishing world: from classical to contemporary; attention will be focused on the changes that have affected this world, passing through the digital revolution.
With no little curiosity, we reached them by telephone to let us tell you what the future trends in food and wine publishing will be and what future critics should expect from the So Wine So Food master.
The Master aims to train future food and wine critics: what skills do you need to have in order to be able to tell, in the most faithful way possible, the characteristics and sensations you have experienced while tasting a dish or a wine?
Cozzella: “To better understand, I will give a very concrete example regarding wine: I followed the various stages provided for obtaining the qualification of sommelier; however I realized that knowing only the theory is worth very little if you do not try numerous wines and if you are not focused during the tasting. The same thing obviously applies to food. You need to have training in history and the world around us. In this field, talent is only validated if it is grafted on commitment, work and a Previous cultural substratum In the event that this background is not available, it is necessary to overcome the gap by studying, tasting and trying to write about what one tasted.
Personally I believe, therefore, that the critic must first of all have a strong mental openness, not starting from preconceptions but diving into the discovery of food as a traveler gets lost in the streets of an unknown city. Identity is also told a lot through food.
Gastronomy touches our identity very much, reveals it and for this reason it is never indifferent to us; you may like it or not, but we will rarely remain impassive in front of a food practice, a habit, a tradition.
Food and wine in general is a sector that brings luck and bad luck to us Italians: luck is to be able to count on such biodiversity as to be envied all over the world, the bad luck is that we are more of this peculiarity or less aware and sometimes this makes us a bit presumptuous, making us believe that there is nothing else to discover “.
Caradonna: “I believe that, as in the oenological field, also in catering you only learn by eating and drinking. Before reaching this point, however, we must start from a cultural and historical background that must be a heritage and which cannot be ignored. a set of knowledge to which the classic practice must be associated. In the world of wine, the more bottles you open, the more you learn to develop the process of gustatory and olfactory memory. I have my own personal conviction that, in order to be defined as a gastronomic critic, in addition to a great professionalism you have to practice in the field and try a place or restaurant several times. You cannot define yourself as food and wine critics simply by making a single visit to a reality, you have to return, know the social and cultural conditions in which a cook is trained. So fundamentally there must be two elements: a very strong basic historical-cultural formation and one based on knowledge to raw materials and processing techniques “.
In this particular historical period, what is food and wine publishing focused on? What will be the trends that will characterize the coming months?
Cozzella: “Difficult to predict but I have feelings, there are already some signs. Personally I have noticed a strong return to traditions, a desire to be reassured, not necessarily in a nostalgic key; the tendency is to go back to the roots of taste. the desire to cook at home has also grown a lot, a practice that metaphorically “saved” us, especially during the lockdown. It is no coincidence that there has been a flourishing of books with recipes for preserves, jams, pickles; it’s like we needed to look back and go back to cooking something that made us feel safe, somehow self-sufficient. Bread is part of this vision, a food that has a lot of metaphor: it is the food of survival in both a secular and religious key; the smell of warm bread spreading around the house warms the heart. Kneading is also an important relief valve and acts as an anti-stress. I spoke to anthropologists who confirmed my thesis: in publishing we are seeing a lot of bread, pizzas, preserves and also a pleasant rediscovery, the practice of creating vegetable gardens on the terrace, from the tiny pot of aromatic herbs to real city gardens . There is also a fact that I think it is important to underline: since the first lockdown the Italians have increased the consumption of fruit and vegetables but the sales of fourth range products have drastically decreased, that is the vegetables already washed and cut. This is the sign that we have given the kitchen back the time it deserves, we realized that we like the contact with the raw material and we are willing to spend 5 more minutes to wash and cut the vegetables we have chosen. As far as catering is concerned, the trend is obviously delivery, a practice that has been present for years, especially in the rest of the world, but which has seen a significant increase in recent months. The chefs realized this possibility that led them to study again, especially with regard to haute cuisine. I believe that this will also influence the trends in serving in the long run, at the moment to focus more on the substance than on the aesthetics of the dish, as has often been done up to now. A trend will also be the one that will see the kitchen increasingly devoted to sustainability. During the lockdown, in fact, we had to reschedule the shopping and we finally realized the amount of food we were wasting “.
Caradonna: “With the closure of the restaurants, the difficulties in moving around and an objective shortage of inspectors for the guides, we are probably returning to a story based on experience and professional path. This pandemic, which has upset the habits of all of us , it can also be considered as an opportunity for change. Having said this, in the post-pandemic, nothing will be the same: we should therefore have the intelligence and intellectual dynamism to understand that everything will be different. Journalists, cooks, suppliers must understand this. . A trivial example: those who export to the world of wine can no longer move and offer their goods abroad. We therefore had to adapt to the methods of selling a product such as Italian wine which has a large market outside national borders. . Ultimately, we have to be a bit like animals adapting to an evolutionary process. Even in the world of gastronomy and food and wine publishing, we should therefore expect an evolution “.
What should aspiring food and wine critics expect from this So Wine So Food Master?
Cozzella: “I sincerely hope it is a great start, a right way to start and build a cultural background to then face the real journey”.Caradonna: “Probably the possibility of having tools for reading and approaching a fascinating world, in continuous evolution. We are in the year in which Artusi, the first” foodblogger “in Italy, is celebrated; from there we started towards a story made of tweets, cinematic communication, I think of the fantastic documentaries that Netflix offers us, up to a communication declined in multiple ways. For which the master will provide tools, after which everyone will have to put their own, understood as a sense of responsibility and curiosity. Those who approach this job without the right curiosity are better off staying at home. Such a master is certainly an added value, it will give an important interpretation. Then it will be up to you, the critical future, to make your own “.
