Lessons in the language of food
A Rotary fellowship unites the world around matters of taste
It’s a perfect spring day, with the sun shining, a gentle breeze blowing, birds chirping. I’m hanging out with more than 50 Rotary members and friends at Cantine Santa Benedetta, a winery outside of Rome, standing in the shade of olive trees on an ancient Roman road. Fields of grapevines, leaves just beginning to emerge, stretch to the horizon. We sip “rosa tonic” cocktails (rosé wine, tonic water, rosemary, and grenadine syrup) as the proprietor tells us about the vineyard, where her family has produced wine for more than 300 years.
From left: The table is set for a pasta-making class at Cantine Santa Benedetta, a winery outside Rome. Cocktails are made from the vineyard’s rosé wine. Egg pastas are more porous and used for heavier sauces and soups. Fabia Benedetti explains the history of the property.
We’re here for the first international gathering of the World Fellowship of Rotarian Gourmets. The group boasts about 500 members worldwide, including 300 in Italy. It’s one of more than 100 Rotary Fellowships that bring together members with a common passion, anything from motorcycles to surfing to running to, in this case, food. And lots of it.
We move to a patio where the proprietor demonstrates how to make pasta: form a well in a mound of flour, mix in an egg, and add a pinch of salt, olive oil to make the dough more elastic, and wine to cut the smell of the egg. “My grandmother didn’t use either of them, only egg,” whispers my translator, Cristina Berretta, a member of the Rotary Club of Milano Europa and a longtime magazine food editor. Food in Italy is deeply personal.
After the demonstration, it’s our turn. We take our places around two makeshift tables, long boards atop wine barrels, set with eggs balanced atop tiny piles of flour, along with the rest of the ingredients. The Rotary members around me deftly crack, stir and knead, turning out lovely noodles destined for our lunch table. They make it look so easy that I decide to give it a try.
Instant regret. My egg slides out of the well in my flour and all over the table. I push the flour around it and start to whisk and blend, but in my flustered state I forget the oil and wine, which are sitting in two tiny cups beside my spot.
I laugh, deep belly laughs, my hair flying in the breeze and my hands coated in eggy dough. I sheepishly check with Berretta, who kneads it a few more times before, to my relief, she signals approval.
Clockwise from left: Renato Rocco (left), a sommelier and the director of La Buona Tavola Magazine, and Vincenzo Carollo, chair of the World Fellowship of Rotarian Gourmets. The food is a feast for the eyes as well as the palate. “When you speak of wine, when you speak of good food, everyone is smiling. Everyone is happy,” says Cristina Berretta, a Rotary member and retired food editor. The pasta made by fellowship members is served for lunch.
After the pasta-making debacle, it’s on to a pesto-making competition — and some friendly feuding about food orthodoxy. As Berretta explains to me the traditional ingredients in Genovese pesto (basil, garlic, salt, pine nuts, cheese, and olive oil), a great debate erupts over whether pecorino or Parmesan is the correct cheese to use. A small crowd gathers to cheer on gourmet fellowship Chair Vincenzo Carollo, who lives in Sicily, as he mashes together the ingredients for today’s competition. “Vai, Vincenzo, vai!” someone shouts. But when he asks for pepper, the crowd moans “noooooooo.” “Pepper in the south. But the original recipe? No pepper,” Berretta chides.
Eventually, three Rotarian judges gather around a small table, looking like Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood on The Great British Bake Off, except they’re all holding glasses of Frascati, Rome’s most famous regional wine. Five teams. Five dishes. And this cadre of no-nonsense judges, who discuss, point, resample, ask clarifying questions. Finally, they announce a winner, and everybody claps. Then it’s time to eat: appetizers of focaccia, cabbage sandwiches, salty pecorino with three kinds of wine jelly, and porchetta, slow-roasted pork; burrata cheese with tomato sauce and breadcrumbs; our homemade pasta; beef in a red wine sauce with fennel pollen; and mille-feuille of puff pastry and Chantilly cream layers. And there’s still another day to come.
Clockwise from left: Antonio Bernardo heads one of the fellowship’s Italian chapters and helped organize the festivities. he pesto-making competition was fierce. Fellowship member Adriana Siniscalchi smells one of the towering rosemary bushes lining the patio. A Rotary cook makes Genovese pesto using basil leaves that members picked from plants and brought to the table.
Clockwise from left: They may be serious about food, but fellowship members like to have fun. The Deroma family’s cheese factory uses more than 13,000 gallons of milk each day. Giampiero Trovalusci and his furry friend were among the participants. The Deroma family raises sheep for its pecorino. “[In Italy], we don’t have huge farms, just medium and small,” Berretta says. “They care and love their products and animals.”
Carollo loves that the fellowship, despite the playful rivalries, brings together so many people and transcends the Rotary club experience. Present today are not just Rotary members from all over Italy, but some from Germany and Turkey too. “In fellowships, one of the things that attracts me is we all speak the same ‘language,’” says Carollo, a member of the Rotary Club of Passport Mediterranee District 2110. “We all love something together.”
The next day, we take a bus to a sheep farm and cheese-making factory owned by the family of Pino Deroma, a member of the Rotary Club of Roma Foro Italico. There are presentations, samples, and another heated discussion about the desired crispiness of the guanciale meat in amatriciana sauce. And when that’s over, there’s only one thing left to do. “Be prepared,” warns Jenny Bohlin Panozzo, also in Deroma’s club. “After this, we eat until we die.”
Clockwise from left: Santo Caracappa (right) inspects some cheese as Franco Saccà looks on. Bernardo Blasio enjoys the gathering. More than 50 pounds of lamb are on the menu at the fellowship’s gathering at the Deroma farm. The pasta is an example of this sentiment from Jenny Bohlin Panozzo: “This is one of the best countries to have this fellowship. It’s difficult to find bad food or wine.” Özlem Engin traveled from Turkey to participate. Raw fava beans made for a crispy snack. Giuseppa Pennisi and Angelo Borzi, of the Rotary Club of Acireale in Sicily, sample the food.
This story originally appeared in the December 2023 issue of Rotary magazine.