Click here for the fair information and details.

Over the last month, I’ve been Skyping frequently with Vini Veri founder and natural wine advocate Giampiero Bea (above).

I’ve always been a fan of his and his wines, wines that Tracie P and I enjoy together with gusto.

But our chats have given us a chance to learn more about each other’s lives and families: our conversations are punctuated by our children’s booboos and laughter as my girls vie for my attention in the early morning and his son flops in his lap, curious about the American on the other end of his father’s afternoon call.

This newfound and cherished intimacy has been the backdrop for a much more serious dialog about the present and future of natural wine.

Now that I’m a dad (with a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old), I have an even greater appreciation of the urgency of his mission. What world will we leave our children when we’re gone? It’s a question I ask myself all the time. And the answers will be as intimate as they are universal.

“Natural wine is not an abstract concept,” he said to me emphatically yesterday before work obligations forced us to end our call.

It is the very real “application of our conscience,” he said as he spoke of his dream of creating a natural wine protocol that will be recognized and embraced as cultural patrimony.

After much back-and-forth and many wonderful and colorful confabulations, he and I have agreed that in coming months, I am going to give him a hand in giving an English-language voice to the ViniVeri fair.

It’s a labor of love and I began today with a nuts-and-bolts post on the dates, hours, and location of the fair, as well as some other useful information.

The boilerplate is accompanied by my translation of Giampiero’s notes on this year’s fair and its themes.

There are a lot of technical issues to be ironed out in terms of the fair’s English-language media presence. We are working on it and in the meantime, I hope that my contribution will facilitate my American colleague’s attendance.

I’ll be spending a day in Cerea with Giampiero this year and we are organizing a TBD event where I will be participating as well. Stay tuned…