Are you a foodie? Are you the first on your block to find the hot new restaurant or identify a trend? If so, when you dine out – or even visit the gourmet shop – you look for not just a given food (i.e. honey, lamb, bread) but a specific purveyor of that food. Gina Gallo of Gallo Family Wines recognizes that small, quality producers deserve recognition, and has created the Gallo Family Gold Medal Awards to honor these purveyors.
The third annual Gold Medal Awards was recently held at Park Avenue restaurant in New York City, an interesting choice as this restaurant changes its menu four times a year (and changes its name accordingly) to fit with the seasons. As you can imagine, many of the big names in the food world were there — many of whom I interviewed when I hosted the A Taste of Luxury TV show in Boston.
Tall, slim, and sporting shiny red hair, Gina Gallo hopped tables looking dapper in a dark suit and vibrant scarf. Nearly a decade ago in Boston, I had interviewed Ms. Gallo at the Ritz Carlton hotel for the local newspaper, and am pleased to see that her family’s commitment to wine has now expanded to food. After all, we are what we eat. In the big cities, many of us have lost touch with “real food.” Driving from San Francisco to Napa, for example, city dwellers will see black and white cows, brown horses, and farm stands selling fresh sweet yellow corn and tangy red cherries. Award ceremonies like this remind us to support artisanal producers.
Gallo Family Vineyards created the Gold Medal Awards program in 2006 to recognize excellence and the highest standards in quality and craftsmanship among artisanal food producers in the United States. This year, entries flooded in from every inch of the country, with more than 300 applications submitted and over 270 food products sampled for the panel of culinary expert judges to taste. In the end only one entry from each of the seven categories were chosen.
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