Category Archives: de aceto

The tale of a social media influencer: Imp of the Perverse.

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Above: Alicia Lini, right, with my longtime friend and social media influencer, Giovanni Contrada, aka Imp of the Perverse.

When Italy first went into lockdown mode in March 2020, my longtime friend and fashion designer Giovanni Contrada (above, left) was living in Milan where he was building his Imp of the Perverse label and brand.

The boredom of the closures led him to start documenting his (at first modest) culinary adventures in Italy’s fashion and culture capital. What started with handful of simpatico videos on TikTok, where Giovanni would interact with owners of neighborhood cafés and restaurants, soon blossomed into an increasing number of likes and shares. And before long, that number started to grow — exponentially.

When he called me at the end of the year, he told me, “dude, I’m huge on TikTok.” And he wasn’t kidding.

He already had close to one million followers at the time. Today, he has 1.5 million followers — yes, one and a half million.

He also has an agent and scores of requests for product placements and endorsements. And his fashion line has exploded as well.

When Giovanni’s unique line of jackets and suits first took off, he was a favorite among the glitterati crowd. Ellen Degeneres and Melissa Etheridge were among the first celebrities to wear his clothes. Remember when Melissa Etheridge performed at the Grammys during her battle with cancer in 2005? She was wearing a Giovanni jacket.

As Giovanni was rising in the fashion world, he would often dress our band Nous Non Plus for our shows. Over the years, he’s even designed a few special pieces that he’s gifted to me (including “The Jar” hoodie). When I was up for a prize in Milan some years ago, he dressed me for the awards ceremony.

Last week, I traveled to Los Angeles to meet another dear friend and longtime client of mine, Alicia Lini. On Thursday morning, we sat down with Giovanni for breakfast at this fantastic Italian bakery and café on Sunset Blvd. called Ceci’s (everything was great, the erbazzone exceptional).

Click here to see the TikTok they made together. Click here for the Instagram. Giovanni also posted a wonderful clip of him enjoying Alicia’s traditional balsamic vinegar.

It was one of the ages. But that’s no surprise. Giovanni has always been such a loving and generous friend to me, a big brother who has comforted me in my worst times and shared my joy in my best.

Giovanni, I love you. Thanks for carving out an hour of your morning for us. I’ll never forget that chilly overcast day in LA as long as I live.

If you’re wondering where the handle “Imp of the Perverse” came from, look no further than Edgar Allen Poe.

Your Italian wine is organic but what about your vinegar?

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A new category on the blog: de aceto.

Above: a popular brand of organic-certified red wine vinegar in Italy. The designation “biologico” on the label denotes “organic” in Italian.

Over the course of my three trips to Italy this year (so far), it seemed that organic wine vinegars kept popping up at every meal. One of the most popular brands, at least in Piedmont where I was teaching, was this Ki Group red wine vinegar, above.

(I’m not a fan of the commercial “balsamic” vinegars that generally find their way to even some of the best restaurants in Italy. They are mostly made from wine vinegar that’s been aromatized with real or concentrated balsamic or even caramel. The balsamic vinegar trade, sadly, is one of Italy’s most under-regulated imho.)

According to the product profile, the Ki Group vinegar is organic certified and made from Italian grapes. Otherwise, there’s little information about how it’s made beyond the ingredients listed on the company’s website — “wine, antioxidant: sulfur dioxide.”

One can only wonder what went into the wine besides grapes and there’s no information as to whether or not it was inoculated. There’s also no indication of how the vinegar was inoculated (all commercial and nearly all small-scale production vinegar is inoculated with a live “mother” yeast).

The best vinegars I’ve ever tasted were those produced by Joško Sirk in Collio (Friuli). There’s no mention on Sirk’s site of organic growing practices as far as I can find. It only mentions the high-quality of the fruit used to vinify the base wines.

I’ve also tasted wonderful homemade vinegars that have been fermented by trattoria owners in Modena and Reggio Emilia provinces (Emilia) where home and in-house production is widely found and where vinegar culture is widespread and heartfelt.

But I’ve never heard an oste (countryside restaurateur) say that her/his vinegars are organic. Most of them will tell you that they make their vinegars using their guests’ leftover wine (whatever that might be) and a mother yeast they’ve been cradling for years.

We consume a lot of vinegar at home (because we eat a lot of leafy greens), mostly organic vinegars that we buy from Whole Foods. Like the Ki Group vinegar I tasted repeatedly in Italy, they are good but nothing out of the ordinary. Honestly, I don’t taste much difference between the commercial high-volume vinegars we get our favorite local supermarket chain and the more expensive organic-certified bottlings we get from Whole Foods. And as in the case of the Ki Group vinegar, there’s not much info available regarding the growing and production practices. But we buy them nonetheless (being the vinegar suckers that we are).

I know you have organic wine in your glass. But what about the vinegar you use to dress your salad and pickle your vegetables?

For the record, the restaurant where I used that vinegar to dress my salad doesn’t make any distinction on its list between organically farmed wines and conventionally farmed ones. But it serves organic certified vinegar. Salad for thought…