Who was Carlo Petrini?
There is a subtle thread connecting a vineyard in Villasimius to a trattoria in Bra, Piedmont. That thread is called respect for the land, for those who work it, for what it produces.
Carlo Petrini — Carlin to everyone — was born in Bra, in the province of Cuneo, in 1949. Gastronome, journalist, writer, popular intellectual: a man capable of transforming food into a universal language and the table into a political act. A rare voice, who spoke of pleasure without forgetting justice.
At Colline del Vento, we consider him a point of reference. Because his philosophy — that food is not just any commodity, but territory, memory, dignity — is the same philosophy with which we tend our vineyards in Villasimius every day.
Slow Food: the silent revolution of "good, clean, and fair"
In 1986, Petrini founded Slow Food. A name that is already a manifesto: slowness as resistance, as a conscious choice, as an act of care.
His insight was simple and, precisely because of this, revolutionary:
Behind every product there is territory, biodiversity, labor, memory, and dignity.
From this conviction arose the manifesto of "good, clean, and fair" — three adjectives that over time became an international banner, adopted by millions of people, producers, and communities worldwide.
In 2004, Petrini's vision became an institution: the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo was founded, the first university in the world to place food at the center of culture and knowledge. In the same year, the Terra Madre network for the first time connected thousands of small producers, farmers, and artisans of taste from every corner of the planet.
The voice of the small: farmers, breeders, wine artisans
Petrini did something few intellectuals can do: he gave a voice to the voiceless.
Small breeders. Mountain farmers. Wine artisans destined for economic and cultural extinction. The Slow Food Presidia — now hundreds worldwide — have been the concrete tools in this battle: a system to protect varieties, breeds, knowledge, and landscapes that the global market was silently erasing.
It is a battle that belongs to us. We too, with our granite vineyards on the Sardinian sea, produce wine in a place that the system could have ignored. Instead, we are here — and we believe, like Petrini, that every territory has something irreplaceable to tell.
Accolades: an Italian who could save the world
Carlo Petrini's work did not go unnoticed.
In 2004, Time magazine named him a European Hero. In January 2008, The Guardian included him — the only Italian — in its list of the fifty people who could save the world.
Important accolades, but perhaps not enough to measure his true greatness. Which lies elsewhere: in making taste political without making it ideological. In defending slowness without making it static. In speaking of tradition without turning it into a museum.
A living legacy
Carlo Petrini left us on February 4, 2025, at 75 years old. But his thought is still here, every time we choose an artisanal wine instead of an industrial bottle, every time we ask where the food we eat comes from, every time we decide to slow down.
As he loved to say:
"He who sows utopia, reaps reality."
We continue to sow. Between the granite and the wind of Villasimius.
