Carlo Petrini died last week, a journalist, writer, founder and longtime president of Slow Food Italy who turned an organization into a movement of food communities around the world devoted to the seasonality and sustainability of food and agriculture in relation to gastronomy. He was 76.

He also helped found the world’s first University of Gastronomic Sciences and Terra Madre, an annual conference involving an international assembly of farmers, fishers, cooks, and scientists.

As the New York Times put it, “It can be hard to remember a time when the grocery stores didn’t offer much beyond frozen, processed foods, or when fast-food restaurants were the only option in town. The plethora of alternatives today – organic brands, farmers’ markets, restaurants that prioritize fresh ingredients – is due in large part to decades of work by Mr. Petrini.”

Longtime friend Alice Waters, owner of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse, said of Petrini that what he was best at was “connecting with the person who is on the ground.”

That meant local, seasonal produce, traditional recipes, communal eating, and getting people to embrace those ideas. He often spoke of the need to “re-localize food and avoid food miles,” and of the “conviviality, cultural, social, historical aspect of food,” seeing it as “central to the human experience and a critical part of how people communicate.”

Food of course includes wine, especially to an Italian, and may indeed embody part of the underlying philosophy calling for “suitable doses of guaranteed sensual pleasure and slow, long-lasting enjoyment.”

To that point, Pete Wells, former restaurant critic for the Times, said in a remembrance of Petrini that, “Good food, obviously, can make people happy.”

England’s Prince Charles once addressed the Terra Madre symposium organized by Petrini by declaring:

“I have always believed that agriculture is not only the oldest, but also the most important of humanity’s productive activities. It is the engine of rural employment and the foundation stone of culture, even of civilization itself.”

Petrini visited Sonoma County in 1999 in which such local foods as aged dry Jack cheeses, the Gravenstein apple, red abalone, Tierra’s chipotle peppers, the Sun Crest peach, and heritage clones of Zinfandel were induced into Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, which recognized and protected endangered, emblematic foods and beverages.

At the time Petrini told local reporters he would always live in his beloved Piemonte “where he relishes the local sausages, cheeses, Barberas, white truffles, and all the customs of the table (including a nap after lunch),” he told The Sonoma West Times and News.

“Yet, after visiting Sonoma County, he says that if he had to leave home, he would move here.”

Petrini returned to Sonoma County many times, including when he spoke to farmers and artisan producers in 2005 at Richard’s Grove and Saralee’s Winery in Windsor. He told the group to remember one thing, that “in our history, we’ve never spent so little to eat. The more we spend little to eat, the more we eat lousy food [and wine].”

He came again in 2012 for an event in which wines were featured from Sonoma County producers Eric Kent Wine Cellars, Anthill Farms, Bucklin Winery, Front Porch Farm, and Claypool Cellars and local cheeses, breads, olive oil, and other produce were featured.

So as we remember the man who summoned us to slow down, here’s a quote from one of his Terra Madre addresses in 2008:

“My final words go to the young people among us. You are the future of the earth. Save the memory of farmers, save the memory of your elders… allow the traditional wisdom of your elders to converse with modern science, and you will be the makers of your own future.”

Photo By: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations