Parma, the capital of Italy’s Food Valley and home to Academia Barilla has been celebrating these days not only the love for Italian food but also the love for opera, with a full month of celebrations and events dedicated to the Italian opera Maestro Giuseppe Verdi with the Opera Verdi Festival 2008.

As our readership probably remember, last year we dedicated several blog posts to the Opera Verdi Festival 2007, blogging about the Maestro as well as about the Opera Festival and the gourmet opera tours organized by Academia Barilla to allow the Italian food and opera lovers to enjoy the event at its best.

This year the Opera Verdi Festival 2008 presented an even more structured program, with plenty of opera shows at several historic theaters and locations; a full digital booklet with program and info in English is downloadable at this link from the Teatro Regio website.

Academia Barilla offered luxury gourmet and opera travel packages to enjoy the experience of discovering Verdi’s opera, the city of Parma and the Italian Food Valley in full style.

In addition to the gourmet cultural tours organized in conjunction with the Festival Verdi, Academia Barilla provides more gourmet and cultural tours to Parma and Italy’s Food Valley, that we love to call Italian Culinary Learning Vacations, as they allow tour guests to learn a lot about Italian culinary culture while enjoying a luxury vacation.

For more info, details and booking for Academia Barilla’s cultural, culinary and gastronomic tours, please get in touch with Academia Barilla in Parma at +39 0521 264060 (toll-free number from Italy 800 376-116), or in the United States at the US toll-free number 1-866-772-2233.

In the mid 1980’s, long before the release of the blockbuster film Sideways, GreatEveryDayItalianWines.com’s founder and wine expert Gary Grunner was part of a small group of wine representatives and educators traveling all over New York State by car, train, bus and plane — selling, doing staff seminars, hosting wine dinners, fund raisers, teaching classes and talking wine all along the way.

It all started in 1982 when Gary fell in love with Italy while on a college exchange student program. As he recalls “It truly was a life changing experience. Not only did I develop a love for Italian wines, food and soccer from the contagious passion of my professors, but I also met a young Italian girl who later became my wife“.

Twenty-six years later Gary has homes both in New York and Italy and spends 10 hours a day immersed in the food and wine scene. He loves to share his passion of food and wine with people and he’s the first to talk about a new wine find, a new wine gadget, a chefs new restaurant and a great wine vacation.

Gary’s websites GreatEveryDayItalianWines.com and GreatEveryDayWines.com reach out and engage people on both sides of the wine world: the eager buyer and the enthusiastic seller.
Both websites provide innovative wine cards and other exciting tools to learn about wines, while Gary’s wine articles appear in a local New York restaurant magazine or on dishdujourmagazine.com. Gary is also in the midst of completing two books on wine and one on food that should be in print in 2009. We all look forward to it!

In the meanwhile, we invite you to explore GreatEveryDayItalianWines.com, where you can also find a wide range of information not only on Italian wines, but also on wineries, wine shops and restaurants, wine books, and more.

A special section of the website is dedicated to “Turismo del Vino in Italy” (Wine Tourism in Italy) and this month features Academia Barilla’s Culinary School as a must-do for those how plan to travel to Italy to learn about Italian food, engage in culinary and gastronomy classes and, of course, to learn also about Italian wines and wine and food pairing!

A full list of culinary and gastronomy courses, complete with cooking classes and gourmet tours of the Italian Food Valley, are listed at the Academia Barilla page on GreatEverydayItalianWines, and we will be soon blogging more in details about it.

For more information about the Academia Barilla Culinary School and this year’s calendar of culinary tours, cooking classes and culinary learning vacations, please contact Academia Barilla by phone in the US at +1 866 772.2233, in Italy at +39 0521 264060, or by email at academiabarillaculinary@barilla-usa.com.