What Happens in August

If you've noticed that more and more strange and lively bottles are arriving on the counter, it's no coincidence: We are increasingly focusing on kombucha and natural winesThere is a reason, and it has a specific flavour: in September we want to invite you to some aperitif with us, to uncork together what you can only read in these pages.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, we are working on new types of subscriptionsMore diverse, more affordable, with prices designed for those who choose us every week. More news coming soon.

And then our usual mission, which this issue tells well: to introduce you more and more producers, and smaller and smallerEight stories, from a volcano lab to a twenty-one-year-old girl with one hundred and forty goats. Enjoy!

Organic fruit and vegetables delivered to your door: what's happening in August?

In the August issue of the Al Passo Food newsletter, we bring you organic fruit and vegetables delivered to your door, along with eight stories from small Italian producers: Selvatica Lab, Leonor and Marco's live kombucha fermented with volcanic water from Mount Etna; Le Quattro Volte winery in San Marco Argentano, Calabria, produces natural wine born from a friendship with Brunori Sas; Verdetti Catia from San Marcello Piteglio, Tuscany, where young Rachele produces Pecorino della Montagna Pistoiese, a Slow Food Presidium; the Taurino family from Arnara, Ciociaria, with Milly Fresh White Eggs from happy hens; Valerio Verdicchio, who harvests Organic Snack Peppers in Rome's Appian Way Park, just ten minutes from the Colosseum; Dolci Giuseppina from Monteleone di Spoleto, Umbria, with DOP farro, roveja, and the 35 bean varieties guarded by Domenico; Beekeeper Lorenzo Merone and his honeycomb honey from the Treja Valley; and BùCool from Genoa with its bamboo paper for eco-friendly homes. Plus, the season's newest products—from Paestum buffalo mozzarella to Sicilian dragon fruit—and three ideas for cooking roveja without turning on the oven. The website remains open throughout August with organic deliveries throughout Italy in 24/48 hours; the Bottega on Via Girolamo Benzoni 18A in Rome is closed only on August 15th and 16th. And in September, you can find us at Terra Madre Salone del Gusto in Turin from the 24th to the 27th, with our stand.

In the village of Presa, forty souls on the north-eastern slope of Etna, a Costa Rican agronomist and a Sicilian engineer ferment "volcanic elixirs." Leonor Corrales Retana she grew up among her family's cafes and is the alchemist of the laboratory; Mark Pilate He's the curious engineer for whom everything is connected. They met in Pisa as students, and in 2021 they left everything for Sicily, with a dream to nurture.

Their kombuchas are made from select teas in Malawi, Japan and Mongolia, and fermented in small batches with the volcanic water from the local spring, crafted like wine: bottle-fermented Pét-Nat style, live and never pasteurized. "Each of our kombuchas reflects the moment the raw material is harvested. There's no standardization: the flavor changes every year, because nature changes."

There are wineries that are born from a business plan, and others that are born from an embrace: The four times belongs to the second family. The project was born in 2015 from the fraternal friendship between Daniela De Marco and Giampiero Ventura, the singer-songwriter Dario Brunori (Brunori Sas) and Emilio Di Cianni. The name comes from Brunori's song of the same name: the dance of the seasons, the cycles of the vineyard, the right time for things done well.

Between Sila and Pollino only native vines — Malvasia, Mantonico, Greco Bianco, Magliocco, Guarnaccino Nero — grown without synthetic chemicals, harvested by hand, and fermented with indigenous yeasts, without filtration. The result: juicy, fresh, and dynamic wines, the rebirth of Calabrian wine sip after sip. To be savored with the restraint they deserve: drink responsibly.

At twenty-one you can do many things; Rachel Petrucci he chose to stand alongside his grandmother, Catia Verdetti, in running the family farm and taking care of about 140 goats In the Pistoia Mountains. Two generations, one profession: made of dawn, raw milk, and patience.

Theirs Pecorino della Montagna Pistoiese is a Slow Food PresidiumA natural cheese made with raw milk, without additives or selected starter cultures. When the milk requires a starter culture, only self-produced starter cultures are used—milk starter, whey starter, or scotta starter—which preserve the invisible biodiversity of the area. And alongside the cheeses, flours from ancient grains and spelt, milled as they once were.

In Arnara, a hilltop village in the heart of Ciociaria, the Taurino family has been cultivating its first love since 2016: pure saffron, hand-picked flower by flower. Since 2024 the second passion has arrived: the organic eggs from happy Livorno hens, free to roam outdoors and fed organic grains that cost 30% more than the average — a choice we wholeheartedly support.

But what tells this company more than any certification is something else: Here the chickens never retireWhen production declines, they continue to be cared for in their natural state. And the eggs, with their characteristic white shells, are born the same day they are laid.

There are stories written backwards: Valerio VerdicchioBorn in 1995, a civil engineering graduate, he left construction sites for the lure of his grandfather's garden. In January 2023, he made the big leap: three hectares for rent. inside the Appian Way Park"We're ten minutes from the Colosseum, in fact, in some cases it would take even less."

His method goes beyond organic: organic and regenerative agriculture, also learned from Jairo Restrepo, the Colombian father of this approach. Self-produced seeds, unusual varieties like the rare pink radicchio, and a living soil to which everything is returned, "to close the circle." The Romans join him directly in the fields: "We're becoming a little family."

In Monteleone di Spoleto, the highest municipality in Umbria — five hundred souls at a thousand metres — a family cultivates the Triticum dicoccum, the only DOP spelled in ItalyA seed passed down since the times of the Egyptians and Romans, unchanged as Mother Nature created it. The spelt that reaches your table is the same one the family grows for itself: the oldest guarantee there is.

There is a special custodian in the company: Domenico, who preserves 35 varieties of beans with names from peasant fairy tales — Mother-in-law and Daughter-in-law, Nuns, Purgatory. And then the redeve, the field pea known since the Neolithic period, rich in iron: this month it's the star of our recipes. The flours? Ground only when needed, in the company's small stone mill.

There are passions that come slowly and others that overwhelm you: for Lorenzo Merone, one of the founders of Al Passo Food, bees were the second thing. It was love at first sight: the industrious buzz, the collective intelligence of the swarm, the perfection of a jar of honey enclosing an entire territory.

His apiary is in the Valle del Treja, at the Monte Gelato waterfalls, where Ligurian bees forage freely among wild flowers, far from intensive crops. Natural beekeeping, exclusively manual work, and a production small by choice: the harvest is what nature allows, not a gram more. Limited-edition excellences that sell out season after season.

ECO with style, LOGICAL right? From Genoa, Lina Montvydaite and Guido Stanchi They have decided that change starts with the most everyday gesture of all: toilet paper. Theirs is in pure bamboo, zero trees cut down, naturally antibacterial, bleached without chemicals.

Bamboo grows up to one meter a day and regenerates itself after cutting, without pesticides or fertilizers; it stores 35% more carbon and releases 35% more oxygen than trees. Each BùCool box saves 6,69 kg of CO₂. No slogans, just a promise of consistency: their dream is an entire ecosystem of truly eco-friendly household products.