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From Dream Board to Vineyard: Rachel Villa’s Sicilian Love Story

Rachel Villa was living in Oxnard, California, working for a military child care program, and going through a divorce when a counselor asked her how she was feeling.

 
“Well, I’m feeling pretty crappy,” she remembers saying.

 

At that moment, she was facing an existential crisis. She’d been a military wife and put her career on hold, and now she faced living on her own. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life.

The counselor asked Rachel where she might want to take a vacation, to which Rachel responded, “You know what? I’ve never been to Europe, so I’m going to Italy.”

The counselor told her to put it on her dream board, something Rachel had never heard of. Soon, she was clipping a cartoon picture of Italy from a magazine and tacking it on a board. That push-pin dream board evolved into a Pinterest page. Eventually, thanks to a chance encounter with a friend of a friend, she found herself facing a whole new world of possibilities in Sicily: a husband, a vineyard, and a family.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with Rachel about how her dream board became a reality and how she helped launch Catania-based Gimmillaro Family Vineyards.

 

 

What brought you to Sicily?

In another life before my ex-husband, I was in Pensacola, Florida, where my dad was stationed. Pensacola is the cradle of naval aviation and where the military trains all the pilots that we have agreements with.

 

During my college internship, I got a job on base that provided housing. I was there with all these other girls; we were with the officers and all these Italian Navy pilots. And man, that was fun. Every weekend, we would pile up in my Jeep and go to Pensacola Beach.

 
I stayed in touch with one guy (Ruggiero)—totally platonic—over email for 20 years. While dealing with this dream board, I decided to message him and tell him I was looking to come to Italy.

He said, “Where are you going to go?” And I said, “I don’t know. There are a couple of jobs available. One of them is in Naples.” He said, “You do not want to go there.” And I was like, “Well, if it gets me to Italy, that’s better than nothing!”

I applied for the job, and I got it. There were over a thousand applicants, and out of seven people, I was one who got this training position to be a manager with a child youth program.

Before I went to Naples, they wanted people to do some temporary assignments. So they sent me to Sicily at Sigonella Naval Air Station, where my friend was stationed in the Italian Navy. So I messaged him and told him when I was coming. And he said, “Actually, I’m on an assignment with the Italian Navy for the beginning of that time, but I have a friend who I can hook you up with to show you around.”

I got a message from this guy named Marco, and I could hear his accent through the way he wrote, “I hope I do not disturb you.”

I was like, “Who is this?” I started looking at his pictures, and he seemed to be in the military. And I was like, okay, so this is probably Ruggiero’s friend. So I told him when I was arriving, and he offered to pick me up. And I was like, “No. My boss is picking me up, but just meet me at the residence.” And he was waiting for me there. He was there every single night for the next 90 days.

Apparently, I had a boyfriend. Within 10 days of meeting this guy, he took me to meet his mom. And after 90 days, I had to go back to the States, and I was like, “I have a boyfriend in Italy. What am I going to do?”

I was not looking for it at all. I just was looking for an adventure. But gosh, I found a man.

He kept saying that he was a farmer and worked as an agricultural scientist, which was his degree. He was telling me some things about that, but I didn’t ask many questions. I was not taking him seriously. I wouldn’t say I didn’t care. It was about me. It was me-time.

So, I came back to Oxnard and realized, “Wow, if I don’t go back to Sicily, I don’t know what we’re going to do. This is going to be a crazy long-distance relationship. I’m going to have to go back and forth from Naples to Sicily every so often to see this guy. Is that even a relationship? Do I want to do that?”

During this training period, which took about a year, I ended up going to Key West, Florida, and everywhere else except Sicily. I finally decided to take him seriously as this relationship was progressing.

 

I had no idea that every time he went to a vineyard, it was his. I came to visit, and it was in October of 2017, and he took me to one of his locations where he was going to be doing a vendemmia, which is a grape harvest; our mutual friend came down, and his sister was there, and all these people he knew came. And I was like, “So whose farm is this?” And Marco was like, “It’s mine.” And I was like, “We have been together for a year. How did I not know that you had a vineyard?”

He said, “I don’t come here very often. We just came for the vendemmia, and I trim the branches throughout the year and tend to the soil, but this is my vineyard.”

 

I suddenly felt really out of my league and started getting emotional. And I said, “Marco, I don’t know if this is going to really work because I have been a military kid my whole life. I move a lot, and I’m going to go to Naples, and you’re here, and that’s a lot of back and forth, and I just don’t think I can do it. I need somewhere where I can plant my roots.”

 

He literally bent down into the dirt. He picked a little bit up, held my hand, and said, “Plant your roots here with me.”

 

Tell us how the vineyard evolved.

It was just a plot of land he was making patronale with, like garage wine. It’s what the locals make for themselves.

 

As a Californian, I had a little knowledge of what people want when they go to a vineyard, especially somewhere like Santa Ynez Valley or Temecula. We’re expecting meals, a beautiful wine tasting, and sometimes just a flight and just sitting there and enjoying the view. But definitely some customer service and a learning experience.

One of the things I noticed while doing some reconnaissance wine tastings around here was that nobody was having people come and do the harvest just for fun. There were opportunities to do a grape stomp, but nobody was being allowed to do real hands-on. And I thought, “Why is there some legal reason?”

Marco looked it up and said, “Actually, there is a legal reason. There need to be ‘tutors,’ and the work must be declared.”

And I was like, “Well, how do you declare this work?” Marco explained that it would need to be a “demo.”

 

I said, “So, we can do it. We’re not going to get in trouble if we have people come, and we could even give them a barbecue.” He said, “Correct, because the product is separate from the main production. Then they’ve done the work, and we can show them how to make a patronale.”

 

I was like, “Oh, Marco, Americans would love that!”

And so we’ve come up with this from the reconnaissance and knowing nobody else was doing any kind of meaningful hands-on at the level people really wanted. Having a tour of a beautiful vineyard and a beautiful winery with all this professional equipment isn’t educational. It’s a tour of something already established and expensive. But people who want to know how to grow and produce wine are not really learning how to do it. So we came up with a year of vinification, a year of wine, which is all the processes.

 
So we have a harvest. It starts with that. We bring people out, they harvest, and we separate, we squish, and then we transport to the place where we do the vinification with those people, and then we give them a barbecue.

 

 

The next process is turning the grapes, the maceration. When it’s in the containers with the skins, you can’t just let it sit there; you have to move it around. Could I make an event out of that? Possibly. We haven’t yet.

Then, the next process is moving the liquids to the travaso and then bottling, and it still has to sit in the bottle for a while. So, I thought, “I’ll have another event where we do a wine tasting, and we invite the people that came to the vendemmia and say, ‘Let’s go bottle your wine, and we’ll have a party.’”

We had a wine bottling event, and about 12 people showed up. Five of them had been to the vendemmia before. They absolutely loved the thought that their effort had gone into the bottles and the liquid they were bottling.

 
We let them do the hand bottling because we didn’t have the machine. We just filled it up with a tap, and it dripped everywhere. It was such a mess, but everybody had the best time!

After the fact, I thought, okay, what do people really like the most? Did they care about the food? No, they cared about the experience they weren’t getting anywhere else. And I was like, “How can I turn this into a moneymaker?”

 

What challenges have you faced along the way?

It’s been a process of trying to find out how I can market this because if I deal with just Italians, there’s a lack of interest around here. The foreigners are where I am focusing, especially the people from the base here, who speak English, and I know what they want. The problem is they require things that most tourists or expats wouldn’t because they live here and they have to deal with the roads. And some of them are very homebody. So I was like, “Well, I have to rent a van or get a bus and have an event. And I’ve got to calculate that into the cost of the whole thing.”

 

I did a vendemmia with 60 people. I had a 30-person van and another 30-person van. I had to eat the cost because 15 people didn’t show, and I still had to pay for that or otherwise ask the other people to pay more after the fact. And that was like, “I’m not going to do that.” I’m learning on the job.

 
We finally have a vintage. We have a 2022, and we lost all of our grapes at our primary vineyard in 2023 due to a fungal blight, but we had a secondary vineyard that we bought grapes for as an experiment, so we technically have a 2023 as well. We are not going to label it. We’re going to keep it a patronale because, legally, it’s not registered on our land, so we can’t sell it that way. We can sell it as a patronale, though.

 
So we technically have two vintages, and this year, we’re going to have a white. And I’m trying to stick to the guns here and be a completely bio vineyard. It makes your job exponentially more difficult. You’re highly volatile. Your processes have to be dead on. There are certification processes and criteria that need to be adhered to in order to qualify.

 
White has been very hard. We’ve lost it every year for the last five years. It gets skunky so fast. The summers have been unusually hot. We don’t have a temperature-controlled environment, and we are off-grid, which is again part of our process of having a bio vineyard. This year, we are working with a nearby cantina to be sure to follow the white properly.

We could get a business loan, dredge the land out, get some water flow from the city, have a sewer line put in, and do some irrigation, as well as all the things we need to have what the other big vineyards are doing. But we’re trying to be off-grid to show people that it can be done and can be done well. A lot of times, when these producers grow their production, they just abandon those simpler ways in favor of the more efficient industrialized vinification styles. And while those are great, we’re just trying to be as authentic and practical as possible.

 

What are your plans for the future?

We are working up to more events as we develop different wines. For instance, we want to do a sparkling wine in the future. Of course, we want to keep the demo vendemmia. The best way to teach people about wine is to let them help create the basic/patronale wines and also let them work on the vineyard.

 

We have hosted several groups from the Sigonella base to volunteer their time for community service credits with their command. They come on weekends and prune or plant cover crops on the terraces. Not only is this helpful for the vineyard, but it’s also a way to get our name out there as a place where you can really learn about the wine industry.

 

 

What experience do you hope to share?

The ups and the downs. I want people to see that it doesn’t mean you’re wealthy to have a vineyard. It just means you’re putting effort into something and trying to make it great. And sometimes, it fails. And what is the outcome? I’m going to try to pull myself up like they say, “by my bootstraps,” get back up, and start going and keep it going. I’m not giving up.

A lot of times, people just think that every year, the wine’s going to taste the same as last year, even though you have these wine tastings, and everybody says, “This is 2022. It has more berry flavor; these are the same grapes on the same land. This is 2023, and it tastes woodier, blah, blah.”

It does taste different. I can’t even explain why it tastes so different from one year to the next or why we have the same grape varieties. They’re separated by three miles and taste completely different.

 
It’s a beautiful thing, and I can see why people get so wrapped up in wine and everything about it. It’s a challenge, and it’s unbelievably rewarding. It is a science and an art. And then again, it’s farming, so it’s extremely volatile.

 
People have so many little experiments up on Etna. We are friends with this neighbor, and he’s trying to make a sparkling out of a grape that nobody would’ve made a sparkling out of before. And he is like, “I’m going to do it. It’s going to be amazing.” And I love that positivity.

 
So when I have people come, and I am showing them all the work we’ve done, I’m not here for the applause. I’m here because it’s like when I was a teacher, and I had a child that was very difficult, and other people were just constantly giving up on this child. How cruel is that to just give up on a child? It’s finding that path out and finding another direction to do something. And that’s what makes wine special: everybody has a different process.  

 

 

 

 

 

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Why One New Hampshire Limoncello Maker Chooses to Import Its Lemons from Sicily

On my first trip to Sicily, one of my cousins handed us a bottle of limoncello. I had never tried the beverage before, but I was grateful for the opportunity to taste a traditional Southern Italian liqueur. We packed the bottle with us when we left to visit my other cousins in Milan.

I did not anticipate that we would receive a second bottle from my Northern relatives, who shared a similar pride in the beverage. By the end of our trip, we had so much limoncello that I had to give it away before we flew back to the U.S. But the sweet lemon liqueur will always remind me of family.

The same holds for Phil Mastroianni, co-founder of Fabrizia Spirits, who remembers his Calabrese grandmother sipping limoncello. After a trip to Italy, where he enjoyed a glass with his cousin, he began making his own. His uncle tasted it and encouraged him to transform his hobby into a business. He’s since branched out to sell blood orange and pistachio cream liqueurs and canned cocktails. 

Phil shared Fabrizia’s signature natural ingredients, why they use Sicilian lemons, challenges he’s faced, advice he’d share, and more.

 

 

What exactly is limoncello?

Limoncello is a lemony liqueur made from the zest of lemons, flavored and colored by the essential oils that are inside the zest. It’s a four-ingredient recipe with zest that contains the natural oils added to alcohol, sugar, and water. 

Fabrizia’s Syracuse lemon grove

Why do you use Sicilian lemons?

Our limoncello uses Sicilian lemons for two reasons. One, they make limoncello as tasty as any lemon you’ll get from anywhere in Italy. But there’s more transparency. Sicily grows 70% to 80% of the Italian domestic production of lemons. 

Arabs brought citrus to Sicily between 900 and 1000 A.D. They also brought the ideal irrigation system for lemons, and they just grow well. They don’t need nets. The temperature rarely goes to freezing, where the tree could get damaged, versus if you go north to Campana, that subtle five additional degrees average temperature makes a difference.

Not only do the lemons grow in abundance, but they’re also less expensive for all the reasons I just said, and the land is flatter. Mount Etna has that wonderful volcanic soil on the island’s eastern side that really helps them. So because they are easier to grow in Sicily compared to the hilly slopes of the Piano de Sorrento or anywhere else in Amalfi, you end up having more access to the fruit.

 

We visited the other lemon-growing regions—Amalfi, Sorento, and even a town called Rocca Imperiale, which is in Northern Calabria on the Ionian Coast. Rocca Imperiale actually just received an IGP status from the European Union. They sell to the Amalfi Association because the Amalfi Association changed its bylaws to allow lemons from this town in Calabria simply because Amalfi cannot keep up with its own demand given the natural environment of where Amalfi is.

Sicily doesn’t have those issues. What we found is even when we visited the Sorento Association in Fondi, where a lot of the Sorrento lemons come from, there have been multiple instances where authorities have had to come in and say, “Nope, these are not Sorrento lemons. These are not Amalfi lemons. They really grew in Tunisia or Spain.” I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that ever happening in Sicily. They’re able to grow them in abundance there on their own.

 

So, it is part pricing and part knowing we’re getting what we’re paying for and using Italian fruit. Ultimately, there’s no real difference in the quality. 

 

Nick Mastroianni picks lemons for their flagship product.

 

Why did you choose New Hampshire as your base?

I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. All my grandparents immigrated from southern Italy to Boston. It is $10,000 a year to have a liquor license in Massachusetts as a manufacturer. In New Hampshire, it was $1,700 and still is. And this was 15 years ago. Even to do it the “right way,” you need federal and state licenses.

 

I was 25 when we found a place to rent, and I remember doing the math. Even up here in New Hampshire, we would have to sell almost 6,000 bottles a year without a salary, without anything, just to pay all the licensing fees and the rent where we were going to produce it. At that point in my life, I had only made about 50 bottles of limoncello.

 

It seemed like an absurd number: Who was going to buy 6,000 bottles of limoncello? I’m proud to say that this past year, we have hit almost 300,000 bottles in annual production, and our biggest customer is the Epcot Pavilion in Disney World. They buy over 6,000 bottles a year in just that one location. So it shows that sometimes you need to make sure that you dream big enough.

 

When starting, you need to take one step at a time. Had we got the licensing in Massachusetts, we would have had to sell 9,000 bottles. And that was an even more inconceivable number at the time—just to break even. New Hampshire is a small state that treats businesses very fairly and entices them to come here. 

Had we been in California, for instance, we would’ve felt the need to stay California fruit forever because that’s simply what they do. At first, we were all-California fruit, and then it was fruit from wherever we could get it from—Mexico, you name it—and then we went to a blend of Italian fruits. A year and a half ago, we said, “Okay, we’re going to go 100% Sicilian,” and we have a camera on the grove we buy the lemons from.

 

We are producing limoncello in an authentic way. We could make a limoncello that is an 8 out of 10 just by cutting out the fake coloring and having a good recipe. Now that we’re able to get the fruit from Sicily, and we still make it the old-fashioned way, the same way they make it in Italy, we can make it a 10 out of 10, and we can do it at a better cost than the brands that are trying to produce it the right way in Italy and sending it over here. 

 

What challenges have you faced?

We can produce Fabrizio limoncello for less because we just bring the lemons over, not the finished product with the glass and the bottles, et cetera. On the other hand, we import almost a million lemons a year from Sicily. So that has its own challenges.

 

The biggest challenge in the space is—hands down—getting distribution. That’s something I wasn’t planning on when I started this business. It’s taken a lot of time, but I got good at it. And we get to work with some really large liquor wholesalers. But those relationships don’t happen overnight. 

 

Fabrizia Spirits now sells a whole line of bottled and canned beverages.

 

Tell us about your blood orange liqueur and pistachio cream liqueurs.

The blood orange came naturally since its production is the same as that of limoncello but with blood oranges. One day, I was walking through Boston’s Little Italy (the North End), and a customer said, “Hey Phil, why don’t you make blood orange cello? I would buy it from you.” We started making it right after that.

 

The pistachio was a lot more work. We noticed an uptick in places making pistachio martinis, and especially since pistachio is popular in Sicily, where we get our lemons, it was a natural extension. With that said, creating the liqueur took a lot of formulation as there is no one set recipe.

 

What led to the creation of your canned cocktails?

All of the left-over lemons! When we launched our ready-to-drink canned Italian Margarita in 2018, we were throwing away about 400,000 zested lemons per year at the time. We started juicing them and used that as the base for the cocktails. Being part of the rising popularity of ready-to-drink cocktails has certainly increased the visibility of the Fabrizia brand. 

 

How has listening to your customers influenced the evolution of Fabrizia Spirits?

Always so important to do. We are constantly listening to feedback on sweetness and taste profiles. With that said, the number one thing we hear is something we always promise to do: Be a brand you can count on to make natural limoncello and other alcoholic beverages with no fake colors or flavors ever. 

 

Ready-to-serve Fabrizia Limoncello Spritz

 

What new products or ventures excite you?

We’re looking into producing Fabrizia in Italy for the Italian market in the years to come, which would be a big achievement for the brand. We’re also diving into the deep end with a bunch of versions of bottled and canned Limoncello Spritz, made with imported Italian wine.

 

What advice would you offer other entrepreneurs?

If you’re going to get involved in the spirits business or start your own business, you have to really size up how big your excitement and passion are for what you’re going to do. I am more excited today than I was 17 years ago to be making limoncello.

But there’s been so much time over the last 17 years where things have not gone right, and progress has not happened as fast as we had hoped. There were disappointments of many varieties, from business relationships to the product not doing as well as we’d like to in certain places.

 

If you really love the idea and believe in it, and it makes you happy, well, you can sustain all those challenges. And if you don’t have the excitement or the true passion, you’ll likely find that at one of those challenges, you’ll find something else you’d rather do. Fortunately for me, that didn’t happen because I believed in the idea so much and wanted it to work, not just so I could make money but also because I really wanted it to work for its own reasons.

 

What do you hope to share?

When it comes to the limoncello, we always love it when it is enjoyed by friends and family together on memorable special occasions. For me, it was about my grandmother. She would have a little bit of limoncello on Christmas Eve. She didn’t drink that often, and I always found it to be a spirit that was approachable to the group. It wasn’t about drinking; it was about bringing people together. 

We really hope that the experience is better for you if you are going to have an alcoholic beverage. You shouldn’t have to say, “Okay, well, on top of having a drink, I’m going to have a bunch of Yellow Number 5,” as in the case of our imported competitors, or “I’m going to have a bunch of preservatives in my vodka soda canned cocktail.” We use fresh juice in our canned cocktails.

 

We really want the experience to be one of enjoying all-natural ingredients. That’s what we’re hoping to bring to people.

 

 

 

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How Jessica Tranchina’s Grit and Healing Inspires Wellness and Recovery

Jessica Tranchina’s father didn’t have it easy. Born and raised in Balestrate, Sicily, as one of nine children, he was a soccer player who didn’t have enough money for shoes. When he came to the U.S. as a teenager, he couldn’t speak English. Instead of college, he fought in the Vietnam War. Afterward, he worked as a house painter. 

“He faced a bunch of hardship that he doesn’t talk about, and that just made him who he is,” Jessica says. “And so we were raised with this example of someone with an amazing work ethic.”

Her father eventually realized a passion for flipping houses, leading to owning rentals and having the money to send his whole family to Italy every two years. His grit and ingenuity inspired Jessica.

“My dad’s an Aquarius, and my daughter, Giovanna, said to me, ‘You’re also an Aquarius, so you’re a trailblazer, and you think differently than other people,’” Jessica says. 

As co-founder of Austin, Texas-based Generator Athlete Lab and owner of Experts in Wellness, this doctor of physical therapy has definitely blazed her own trail. She’s also earned her stripes by competing in fitness events ranging from 5Ks to 50Ks, sprint triathlons to Ironman races, and strength challenges to figure competitions. 

Jessica took time out to chat about her practice and its inspiration. She also shared her goals and hopes for clients.
 

 

You have competed in a wide range of athletic events. How have these experiences shaped your approach?

I’m an eat-your-frog kind of person. When you do the really hard thing in the morning that you don’t want to do, it makes the rest of the day easier and makes you more resilient. So, I do that in business, life, and sports. 

For anything that I tackle, I do the really hard thing or the hard training, whether in athletics or trail runs and triathlons and any competition that was happening. I call opening Generator Athlete Lab in 2018 my marathon or ultra run.

It’s taught me so much about people in general, their psychology, and what makes them tick because it’s way different than what makes me tick. I’m super competitive, highly driven, and motivated. I feel like it’s served me well in life, but my biggest challenge has been learning other people aren’t always like that.  

  

Jessica placed first in the 2009 Honolulu Triathlon.

What inspired you to create the Generator Athlete Lab?

As a practitioner, I knew early on—when I was 12—I wanted to be a physical therapist and follow the best mentors. I defended my dissertation at Boston University; I wanted the top degree. I knew I wanted to be the best.

 

Eventually, I opened my own practice in Hawaii in about 2006. Then, I brought it in 2010 to Austin.

 

I was practicing and seeing clients and would research recovery modalities and smart training. I did a lot of manual therapy and thought, “There is not a single space that exists for not just athletes to recover but also for my clients to recover and get the best manual care, training, and recovery.”

 

So that’s when I said, “I should build it.”

 

Afterward, I thought, “Wait! What if people don’t like this? This is absolutely crazy!” But when I opened it, people said, “Wow, this is crazy, but it’s working.”

 
Jessica’s clients range from athletes to individuals looking to boost their mental health. 

Why did you choose to focus on recovery?

It was the one thing I didn’t focus on personally. My only thoughts were, “Go! Train, train, train!”

 

Things started hurting for me, and I thought, “Why am I not even doing this?”

 

I started researching modalities that are science-backed and proven to work. They’re great for longevity and mortality, heart health, and brain health.

 

It’s not just athletes recovering for sport. We see a lot of injuries and people doing it for their mental health. And that has been the most rewarding part of it. I didn’t even think of how amazing that part would be.

 

Originally, it was for inflammation and injuries, and now, people come to get off their antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs to sleep better and to be nicer to their kids. And that carries so much weight to me. It’s very rewarding. 

 

Describe the protocols you and your husband, Delfin Ward, have designed.

We’re known for our science-backed recovery protocol: 30 minutes in our infrared sauna and then in our contrast—hot and cold— tubs, along with medical-grade compression garments and vibration. There’s science behind each step. We put them in that order, so when you come in for your pass or appointment, you get the full protocol we’ve designed.

 

You also own Experts in Wellness. Tell us about that business.

Generator Athlete Lab is zoned as medical, but we don’t do physical therapy there because we don’t want people to get confused. You can’t bring your insurance card in and use that. It has a membership model or a pack. 

Since I still practice physical therapy, I’ve launched Experts in Wellness, where I hang my Physical Therapy license. I wanted to partner with a nutritionist, too, and we’re starting to offer nutrition services and blood work panels to my clients. It’s awesome.

 

What are your future goals?

We are going to expand Generator Athlete Lab nationwide. We’re going to partner with like-minded people with the same mission as ours, truly compassionate people who want to help. And if we franchise, we franchise. Right now, that doesn’t sound attractive to me because that sounds like fast expansion without me keeping my hand on the pulse. Our initial plan is to establish partnerships across the nation.  

 

What do you hope clients take away?

True healing. Not just physical healing but emotional and mental healing.

 

Jessica presents the concept of Generator Athlete Lab to her community.

 

What do you find most rewarding about your work, and how do you stay motivated?

I took off seeing clients for two years, probably the least motivated two years of my life. I’ve wanted to be a PT since I was 12, and I stopped seeing clients because I just wore the full-time business hat.

 

The business is doing really well, but it was not fully fulfilling me. Seeing clients really grounds me. Now that I started seeing clients again after a two-year hiatus, it has reignited every single fire in my life.

 

A quote by Pablo Picasso resonates strongly with me: “The meaning of life is to find your gift, but the purpose of life is to give it away.”

That quote hit me so hard when I saw it because I was not giving away my gift. I’m a healer; that is my gift. My gift is to help. And I help in a lot of different ways. I help my team, I grow and lead my team, and my team helps our members. But specifically, I need to help people: individuals. 
 
 

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How a Community Mural Project in Sicily United Students Across Cultures

Artist and educator Hillary Younglove was content working on her various projects alone in her home. She’d made a career out of it. But a conversation about puppetry would change the course, igniting a new passion she had not realized.

Her friend told her about the Processional Arts Workshop, a nonprofit ensemble of puppeteers, artists, and musicians committed to creating site-specific, community-organized parades, processions, and performances in the small Northern Italian town of Morinesio. Led by American workshop instructors Alex Kahn and Sophie Michahelles, locals would come together to make large puppets from recycled materials while learning techniques such as bamboo armature construction, paper-mâché casting, and scenic painting. 

The California-based Rhode Island School of Design alum and former Fulbright Scholar found the project fascinating. She decided to travel to Morinesio with her employer’s art department, theater teacher, and music teacher. They joined in the puppet-making, and on the day of the culminating event, the Midsummer Procession, she was surprised to see hundreds of people show up with puppets from past years to march throughout the town before gathering for a large dinner. 

“I think it was at that moment I thought, ‘Wow, the artwork that we made is reaching all these people,’” Hillary says. “And I just loved seeing the magic in the adults’ and children’s eyes, and I thought, I want to do this. It was the start of my thinking about community art and its impact.”

Today, Hillary proudly promotes community projects as a specialty. In 2023, she’d return to Italy—this time to Lentini, Sicily—with her Sonoma Academy students, who collaborated with local non-profit Badia Lost & Found on a mural project. 

Hillary and I chatted about that recent project, its inspiration, subject, challenges and highlights, impact on the students and community, and more. 

 

 

What inspired this project, and why Sicily?

We do a lot of trips abroad with the students. A couple of years ago, I thought it would be great for our students to get to know Italian teenagers. So our arts department planned a trip to Sicily. One of my colleagues, a music teacher, has family from Puglia, and he’s been to Sicily a lot, so he wanted to do an arts trip to promote his music program. And I said, “Well, if I’m going to come, I want to do a mural.”

I started reaching out to different arts organizations in Sicily, writing to them without knowing anyone. I showed them the murals I’d done, but I wasn’t getting very far. Then, I was put in touch with an organization called Badia Lost & Found, which is in Lentini. They were the perfect organization, a group of artists who wanted to revitalize a beautiful yet dilapidated neighborhood full of history. They started having local artists do murals throughout this designated arts district. 

Lentini is not a tourist town at all. It’s off the beaten track, but the people love their town. They started to put these murals in, and they got a big building where they have art classes, too, for the local kids. And so it was a perfect fit for us to partner with them. 

I was put in touch with Erika Puntillo at Badia Lost and Found, who spoke English fluently. So we planned something on Zoom. It was right at the end of the pandemic. I’d had some experience making murals before with students, so I knew how long it would take to do something. I knew we only had one day to do it, which was really tight.

My goal was for our teenagers to interact with Lentini’s teenagers. And so she got a local high school with an arts focus to come, and they were going to paint with our students.

Meanwhile, I did some research because they said they wanted something symbolic that represented the region. So I started going online and visiting museums and looking at different artifacts, and I found this image that I thought would work well as a mural. It was a Byzantine image, a stone carving. I thought the simple design would allow all skill levels to participate. So I took that image and drew it, and then I had one of my students create several color variations to scale. We sent those color palettes and designs off to the people at Badia Lost and Found, and then they chose the one they wanted.

 

Byzantine carving on display at the Regional Archaeological Museum of Agrigento

 

What were some of the challenges you faced?

We had exactly six hours to paint this mural. So I asked them if they could paint the background color before we arrived, leaving us just enough time to sketch out the whole thing and paint it. 

We rented a big tour bus to take the students around Sicily. When we arrived in Lentini, it was really funny because it felt like we were rock stars arriving in this little town that Americans and other tourists seldom visited. The local citizens’ heads turned as the bus pulled in. Our bus got stuck on one of the small side streets, but the locals helped us get the bus unstuck through lots of gesticulation and advice. And so we were late, and then it started raining.

 

The student artists in action

 

Tell us about the experience when you got there.

We immediately got to work. They had their group of kids there; our kids hit it off with them immediately. It was really great. I was so happy to see that my goal had already been achieved through their interaction. As word got out in town that the Americans were painting on a side street, an English teacher brought her class over. There were tons of kids talking excitedly, exchanging stories and ideas about teenage life in Lentini versus life in California with views on art and soccer. It was beyond what I had hoped for. So I was super happy.

They also had commissioned a local muralist. She worked with the Lentini art students while I worked with mine. Our murals were face-to-face on different apartment walls. 

They asked the neighborhood, “Do you want a mural on your building?” And one family agreed to have our design painted on their apartment. 

The family, with two little boys, watched the progress with excitement. We got it done just as the sun went down. So it was great because even after that day, the Sonoma Academy students kept in touch with the Lentini art students they had made friends with, and then those kids met us on the last day in Catania. It was really heartwarming to see that connection. 

The artists beneath their finished masterpiece

What did you personally take away from this experience?

I’d love to do more community-based art projects so that people who don’t frequent galleries or museums have art in their lives. Art is for everyone, and everyone should participate in the act of making something creative. So, I would love to collaborate more here and abroad. It’s just a wonderful thing. 

 

Art from Hillary’s recent Traveling Postcards exhibit

I actually just finished a project that I did for a nonprofit called Traveling Postcards, which supports survivors of gender-based violence through the healing arts. I curated a show in Washington, D.C., for the organization and went there in October to help hang the show. As part of the exhibit, my students helped with writing quotes from survivors and made collages that I turned into small butterflies that accompanied my giant one. 

I’m really interested in how art is a healing and community force. And so I want to keep doing projects like these. 

 

 

 

 

 

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From Sicily to Miami: How Carlo Raciti Built a Gluten-Free Baking Legacy

Among his fondest memories of growing up in Viagrande, Sicily, Carlo Raciti remembers days he stayed home sick from school. He’d step into his family kitchen and roll out fresh pasta or bake cookies to surprise his mother, Caterina Scuderi, when she came home from teaching. 

“I was always involved with flour and dough,” Carlo recalls. “That was my passion. That’s what I was supposed to do.”

 

But his father, Mario Raciti, who had grown up in the bakery business, suggested otherwise. 

 

“He always told me it was too hard,” Carlo says. “He said, ‘Don’t do it. It’s too much sacrifice, and it’s very little gain.’”

 

So, instead, Carlo pursued a common Sicilian career path: tourism and hospitality. He did just about everything from cooking and the front of the house to hotel management.

 

It was overwhelming and led him to drop everything and take a long vacation to Miami. There, he’d meet his wife, Rebecca Bechara, and get an invitation that would eventually lead him back to his childhood passion and opening Almotti, Miami’s first dedicated gluten-free bakery, which sells cookies, pastries, celebratory cakes, and bread with nationwide shipping.

 

Carlo and I chatted about his influences, career pivot, why he’s embraced gluten-free baking, advice for other entrepreneurs, and more. 

 

 

How did your family influence your passion for baking and pastry arts?

My grandma started baking bread during the war while my grandpa was stationed in North Africa. She had to feed a big family, so she started baking bread in their backyard in Acireale. They had a brick oven, and that’s how everything started.

 

They opened a retail bakery, making bread, and all the family baked there. My dad is the smallest of the five kids. He helped a lot and made the bakery deliveries on his bicycle.

 

After many years, my uncle opened Panificio Raciti in Acireale, which is still there. My cousin now runs it.

 

During the summertime, when there was no school, there was no one at home to take care of me. So, since I was six, my parents used to drop me off at the Panificio at 6:00 AM. I spent those days sitting in a little chair watching my Zio Tanino with my cousin Marcello and another assistant making the bread. And that’s where my passion really came in: spending that time inside the Panificio. And that’s influenced me 100% for my future and career today.

 

Mario Raciti (left) grew up making deliveries for his mother’s bakery, a business that inspired Carlo to pursue pastry arts.

 

How and why did you pivot to becoming a pastry chef?

I was working in hospitality back in Italy when I left my job. I decided to take a vacation with friends, and we ended up in Miami for three months. Then, I met my wife.

 

I went back to Italy for a year and then returned by myself. During those three months in Miami, I had done a lot of cooking. A friend of mine, through my wife, said, “When you come back, we’ll do a catering company, and you’re going to run it, or you’re going to be the chef.”

 

So when I came back, we developed the plan and launched a Sicilian-style catering company. That was right before the crash in 2008.

 

Besides catering, I collaborated with an Italian association called Society Dante Alighieri, which is worldwide. They hired me to teach cooking and baking classes for Italians and Americans. Since they were learning Italian, I taught these baking classes in Italian. In the meantime, I started doing a bunch of catering and events.

 

My wife and I wanted to start a business—a bakery. That was the idea. So, in 2009, we moved to Italy and took a sabbatical there. I then returned to school to get my certification in pastry because culinary is very wide. So, I wanted to specialize.

During that year, I worked in a few bakeries, where I learned many techniques. I took different courses throughout the year with World Champion Pastry Chef Roberto Lestani and Pastry Chef Carmelo Recupero, among others. In Catania, I worked for Pasticceria Quaranta, one of the top bakeries today.  

Then, I worked alongside Giuseppe Giangreco, the master baker of the product I started making: pasta di mandorla, the almond pastry cookie that’s made us so popular.

 

Carlo Raciti started selling at a farmers market. He now ships nationwide.

 

Why did you decide to focus on the gluten-free market?

These are almond-based cookies, so they are naturally gluten-free. When we returned to Miami after a year in Italy, we developed our plan to open a retail bakery.

 

Looking for places was very challenging. There was no Italian bakery in Miami. My wife said, “Pick the six easiest items,” and those were cookies. We decided to sell at the farmers market. It was a $500 investment, and we sold out in about two hours.

 

Three months later, we were doing five farmers markets all over Miami. We never went back to the original plan or made a retail bakery because we saw the opportunity to eventually become a wholesaler with our gluten-free product.

 

Making it gluten-free was a business decision. I’m very attached to the community where I live, and I had feedback from people that there weren’t enough gluten-free options.

 

We moved into a facility seven years ago, and I said, “We’ll convert it 100% and do it the right way so there is no cross-contamination.”

 

We became the first dedicated gluten-free bakery in Miami and South Florida in general. As we built up a clientele over the years, I started hearing the story about people getting sick with Celiac disease and so on. My daughter Lucia was dairy-intolerant when she was younger. Personally, I had a rash from eating too many processed products that contained gluten. And I realized that it was better for our clients and the community.

 

Many people say, “You’re Italian. Why are you making gluten-free?” But this is the reason. 

 

Carlo Raciti rolling dough with daughter, Lucia.

What advice would you give budding bakery owners?

Definitely get some experience, at least two to three years working in a bakery, first to understand if it’s something that isn’t for you.

 

If that person is going to be a baker like me, hands-on in the operation, they need to have the passion to do it because the amount of hours going through it can be very overwhelming. 

It is very important with any profession that whatever you do, you do it with passion and love because you spend so much time that if you do not enjoy it, then it could be very challenging. 

 

What are your future plans?

We’re going on 10 years, and we’re looking to grow. Going national has always been our dream. I know it’s very hard. It’s been very challenging because taking a high-quality artisanal product to a national scale where your margin is very small almost makes it impossible. But little by little, we will.

 

We are looking at 2025 as the year to be part of a national show where we can expose our product.

 

The business is our third baby; we have two kids and don’t have family around, so this has been very challenging for us. Taking care of the kids has been our first priority. And then the business. But now my son, Mario Carlo, is 13; my daughter, Lucia, will be nine pretty soon. So we can dedicate a little bit more time to the business.

 

 
A younger Mario Carlo helping his father

What do you hope to share with customers?

Because we ship nationwide, people all over the nation have the opportunity to try my products. They connect to my childhood back in Italy, and customers can experience going to an Italian bakery because our packaging is clear, where you can see through and choose the cookie you want. They may want a cookie that is a little bit more well-done or less done. So, you can choose, and it’s like taking a trip to Italy, where people have a product that is clean with only a few ingredients, very high quality, made by hand. They can see that every single bite is different. And then they realize that it’s not just the business, it’s not just making money, it’s sharing a culture that goes over hundreds of years. The main cookie that we do goes back to the Greeks. So it’s a tradition, it’s cultural, and we want this to continue. 



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How One NYC Artist Transforms Litter Into Environmental Art

The saying that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure certainly holds true for New York City artist Daniel Lanzilotta. The self-proclaimed plastician prides himself on his non-extractive practices. He rarely invests in supplies; there’s enough trash paving the streets, floating in the rivers, and washed up on beaches to work with. By fashioning sculptures and jewelry from this debris, he hopes to inspire more conscientious consumption. As a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project and an advisor to The BxArts Factory, Daniel seeks to lead change. 

His own inspiration? Daniel points to his Italian heritage and the influence of his family, particularly his grandfather from Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, Sicily, on his life. 

“My grandfather’s there; he’s in me,” Daniel says. “That DNA is very much alive. I carry with me an ancient gene that motivates me and how I see the world.”

Daniel shared more about his grandfather, the type of art he creates, the genesis of his journey, how he selects his materials, the story behind his award-winning The Mask, the unique challenges he faces as an environmental artist, his goals, and more. 

 

 

Tell us about your grandfather who influenced you.

He was a fancy plasterer. He did a lot of beautiful cornice work, all the stuff you would see in the buildings of probably the early twenties, thirties, and forties. And that wore him out. He then became an insurance salesperson. He was the hero of the family because he did very well.

 

He was very active in the Democratic party, which I find very interesting because Italians are often not. I used to go with him to give out flyers. I remember it might have been for Hubert Humphrey—that’s how far back.

 

My grandfather was a hoot. He never owned a car; he would walk and take the bus everywhere.

 

He would come every Sunday. They didn’t live far away. And he would knock at the door and say, “Guess who?”

 

He and my grandmother dressed as if they were going to a wedding every single day. I’d say, “Where are you going, Grandpa?” And he’d say, “To get milk,” while wearing a three-piece suit, pocket watch, hat, big overcoat, and beautiful, clean, shiny shoes. This was every single day.

 

He was a very positive, upbeat figure for me. He married outside of his religion, which was the most amazing thing to me. It was the golden standard of marriage for me. They were just the most perfect married couple on the planet. And for him to do that at that time was gigantic. He was the most courageous person I ever knew.

 

Describe your art.

I work specifically 100% with trash and plastic debris. And that is coming at me at all times, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. I’m wearing it right now. It’s my clothes, it’s in my body. It’s past the blood-brain barrier. It’s in the food, it’s in Himalayan salt. Microplastics are everywhere.

 

I gave myself the name plastician to imply that I am working with plastics. I’ve been doing the plastic thing for 28 or 29 years now, and it has been a very long journey of doing this. And through that journey, I became an environmentalist and an activist. My premise is that I tried to bring significance to the seemingly insignificant, meaning that the bottle cap you see on the street as litter is something way more beautiful than that.

 

I speak about consumer-extended responsibility and not so much producer-extended responsibility like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, who make the most plastic stuff in the world and have complete disregard for what happens to it. I ask, “How did it get there, and whose responsibility is it?”

 

As the end user, we are all responsible for ensuring it’s put in its proper place because only 9% of plastics get recycled theoretically. So what happens to the other 91%? That goes to landfills, the ocean, and incinerators.

 

I use beauty through art to capture people’s attention and then have a conversation. I’m not the plastic police. In fact, I just got accepted to New York City’s Sanitation Trash Academy. I signed a paper for training with the New York City Department of Sanitation. I sent it in thinking I wouldn’t hear from them for weeks, and five days later, they said, “You’re in.” And I said, “Yes, I’m the right guy.”

 

So, it’s about awareness and one’s personal responsibility to deal with the issues at hand. And they’re very detrimental at the moment.

 

What started your plastician journey?

I was sitting on the beach in France with my son, who was three years old at the time. And he was playing with plastic toys, and I was sitting there looking at plastic debris on the beach. So, I started making assemblies. I was just taking stuff off the beach. I could only use what I found—no screws. I used my Swiss Army knife and started making stuff. I still have all those original pieces, and I would go back by myself and take walks. Then, I kept seeing the same trash over and over and over and over again. And this went on for years, and I just started honing my skills with it.

 

I am one of the 2024 Human Impacts Institute’s Creative Climate Awards recipients for one of my pieces, The Mask. And I have a piece now in TriBeCa. So this art has taken on a life of its own, and I did not ever realize that I would get to this degree, into this depth of it, 29 years ago. 

 

I’ve been to zillions of conferences about climate change, and they never speak to the art. They’re speaking to business, how to create business from a crisis. I have always found that very interesting because you have to deal with crises and change behavior. That’s what my real platform is now: behavior modification.   

 

Can you elaborate on how your work brings significance to the seemingly insignificant?

I’ve attached this concept to the idea of humans. I deal mostly with plastic debris. In the beginning, it was mostly around ocean debris found on beaches. Then, I made the connection between the single-stream use of plastics and human beings and how human beings are treated in society as single-stream use of human beings.

 

What does that mean? So you’re walking down the street, and of course, you see plastic bottles, caps, and other plastic debris constantly coming into the environment. It’s mostly, if not all, caused by human beings. It’s either carelessly done with the intention of it being thrown out of a window into the environment or placed in overfilled garbage cans.

 

When I look at trash in the environment, particularly litter, I see displaced energy. That item took an effort and a certain amount of energy to create. If it’s a candy wrapper, it was made, printed, transported, and traveled to a store. Then, it was used to protect the product and wound up as litter. So that’s displaced energy.

 

When I look at litter, I’m looking at human trauma: personal trauma. Why would someone do that? How does someone do that? And I equate that with rage, anger, carelessness, and laziness. I see this in many different locales and environments that I go into, and I take trash walks, particularly in New York City and neighborhoods where people don’t really care.

 

When I was growing up in the Bronx, it was very, very clean. Everyone took pride in sweeping, cleaning, hosing sidewalks, trimming hedges, and shoveling snow.

 

So, making that connection and bringing significance to the seemingly insignificant is essential. I take out of that bottle cap that was displaced and thrown into the environment as litter and create something of beauty from it. Thousands of handmade beads are in my work. I make sculptures, hats, earrings, and all kinds of really incredibly beautiful things from that trash.

 

I once worked on a crack vial project. Crack cocaine, if you’re not familiar with that, comes in very tiny plastic, colorful vials. They’re all over the place, so I started collecting them five years ago and made a sculpture. And when I walked into a park up in Harlem, I saw someone keeled over. And I realized that it wasn’t a single-stream use of plastic that I was looking at anymore. It was about single-stream human beings and the same attention to litter—or the lack of attention—that is not given to the situation at hand and its impact on our lives. That person who’s addicted to hardcore drugs and keeled over or literally overdosing is not cared for either. That person became a single-stream human being. They have a story, and drugs started to play a very pivotal role in their lives, where they’re now out on the street. So, I saw the human being becoming that single-stream person who needs to be attended to. 

 

How do you select the plastic debris and other materials you use in your art?

I don’t look for stuff, but it finds me. And the times that I do go out for trash walks, I’m looking at content, I’m looking at how people shop, and I’m looking at what’s getting thrown out.

 

Most of the time, I am walking. I have two aspects to it. One aspect is that I look for toys, and I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of little human figurines, which I really don’t use in the artwork. It’s just a comment on society and what I find in the toy world.

 

The stuff I use as materials in the artwork is just the constant flow of materials. It’s never-ending. It’s in the streets and the rivers and on the beaches, and it just depends on what catches my eye.   

For instance, I made a few pieces from Tropicana orange juice caps, which you constantly see in the environment. On another level, there’s the Tropicana orange juice container. They’re just very interesting and have beautiful designs, so I use them in my work.

 

Most of the stuff I find speaks to me in shape, color, and form, such as the type of plastic. And I don’t always use it. I hold onto it, and then I make pieces. I use a lot of laundry detergent jugs of different brands. The colors are all very interesting and beautiful.

 

So the environment is constantly feeding me plastic at some level somehow, somewhere, wherever I go. It doesn’t matter what country or what city. It’s always in the environment when you least expect it. You think you’re in such a clean place, but it’s not. It’s lurking somewhere. Some interesting shapes will pop up.

 

Urban centers, of course, are the best places to find the treasures. I don’t spend money on art supplies. Over the years, I’ve concluded that what I do is non-extractive, and one of the key points is that I’m taking trash out of the environment. Plastics. And those materials were extractive materials from their inception. Most of today’s plastics are made from crude oil, gas, or coal.

 

Other artists will use extractive materials like acrylic paints and different art supplies based on fossil fuel consumption. That’s extractive art. And so I created this term for myself: I’m a non-extractive artist; I’m only taking out what’s already there. Because of that, I’ve developed many different methods of doing this and processes to make it all stay together.

 

Tell us the story behindThe Mask.

I’m always intrigued by what I find; for instance, the big, black facial part was found on the very eastern part of Canal Street in New York City. And when I found it, it screamed at me. It wanted to be a mask, something I hadn’t made in a very long time. 

 

I was reluctant about it, but it was haunting me. At that time, I was being represented by an art gallery in New York, and the curator said, “Make a mask,” and so I did.

 

I wound up putting it in the gallery without him knowing. And when he came in, he was just blown away by that.

 

It’s been a very powerful, powerful mask. It has some kind of energy, and many of these pieces do. I’ve had people stand in front of these pieces and cry. And I was there.

 

I was blown away by the fact that these plastic pieces touch people in a way that I never expected. One particular piece in particular is Pointing to Heaven, which is about a little girl who was killed. They have an impact that I wasn’t expecting. And the mask is just like that.

 

It’s one of the winners of the Human Impact Institute’s Creative Climate Awards for 2024. I was very honored to accept that award. It is made of hundreds and hundreds and thousands of handmade beads that dangle to the floor with a filigree or the floral arrangement of plastic on top of the head of the mask.

 

The process to get there is really a ritual. The piece is more of a totem that addresses the lack of ritual in our society and the process of healing for personal trauma that a lot of us go through but don’t have an outlet to express.

 

Plastic really is forever. These pieces will outlive many generations, like the ancient arts of the classic periods of Rome, and certainly in the Renaissance, like David and various others, such as Bernini’s doors, which use bronze and marble. These ancient materials have lasted for centuries, but plastics will outdo them by far. We’re talking thousands of years, and under the right conditions, bronze and marble will disintegrate either by age and atmosphere or acid rain. Plastics may break down, but they’re always plastics.

 

That’s what that piece is really about. It’s a journey. It took many years to gather the parts. I didn’t know it would be the mask, and it all came together.

 

One day, that mask was fabricated in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and its response has been overwhelming. It’s a mesmerizing piece when you’re present in front of it; it has a haunting benevolence. It’s a cathartic piece again for me, and seeing those who look at it and want to have a conversation about their experience with it has been very rewarding. The face of climate change has been very impactful.

 

What challenges do you face as an environmental artist?

The pieces that I do stand on their own. But then, when you understand the narrative of the pieces and how they came to be and the story of plastics, fossil fuels, and climate change, you understand that there’s a whole other level of connection. And that art is driving the message about personal responsibility for consumption, the responsibilities of corporations, and how we are going to deal with all this in light of the magnitude of what’s happening. So that’s what an environmental artist is: this converging of activism and a narrative about change. And that’s not easy.

 

When people see this work, they need to know the story. So the story has to go on the side, on the wall, on a pamphlet, or somehow with the talk. And it has to be verbalized and has to be brought to the attention of the viewer.

It’s not just a pretty thing that looks nice on the wall. There’s a message here to start really reevaluating our participation. We’re all in this together. No one is immune. We’re all consuming and doing stuff that we probably shouldn’t. Some of it is feel-good, and some of it is greenwashing. And so we have to dig a little deeper, make personal changes, and challenge ourselves to start looking at the world because it’s a temporary experience. Other people are coming down the pike, and those folks who aren’t here quite yet have to come to their senses about what we’re leaving behind. And so I asked myself this question: am I finding this place in better condition than when I leave it? Or how will it be when I leave this planet when I die?

 

My conclusion to my question for myself was, “No, I’m not,” even though I try very hard to ensure I’m doing the best I can. I gave up my car well over a year and a half ago, and now I just go by bus, train, and bike. That was my sacrifice; that was offsetting my carbon footprint. And so I do a lot of that. I don’t own any fancy computers. I don’t have any kind of gigantic electronic equipment. I don’t own a TV. I just have my phone. That’s a challenge.

 

What are your future goals and projects?

I got accepted to the New York City Trash Academy with the New York City Department of Sanitation, and that’s like a six-week course on everything trash. I am very excited by that, and I hope to gain some really interesting contacts, get involved with the sanitation department, and be able to go and see it. I always fantasize about going back to school and studying trash from an academic point of view.

 

I would like to get into more galleries as a solo artist. I decided to do a trash chandelier. I’ve had these pieces for a very long time; they’re some kind of plastic armature that I believe thread came on. They’re very colorful and beautiful, so finally, I decided, “I have to use these things.”

 

I have about 12 of them, and I’m only using two for the chandelier. Everything has to be from the trash, and it’s going to be quite stunning. And I’m very excited by this piece of work that will come of it. It’ll take a year or more at the rate I go. And so that’s very exciting.

 

What do you hope viewers take away?

It’s about the single-stream use of plastic and bringing significance to the seemingly insignificant, like that bottle cap no one cares about and that person no one cares about. It’s also about bringing consciousness to the plastic issue of litter and creating art from it to have a narrative about creating a dialogue.

 

When people look at my work, they’re drawn into it by its beauty, texture, and color. A lot is going on in these pieces. And so they’re intrigued by them. I’ve had many occasions where I’ve had the opportunity to speak live in a gallery or at an event where I’m asked to speak specifically about what I do. I bring this to their attention: It behooves us as individuals to take responsibility, deal with our trauma, and deal with our unbridled shopping and consumption.

 

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Homecoming: A Return to Wisconsin

Freezing temperatures and about a half a foot of snowfall greeted us as we stepped off the plane in Milwaukee. But I’d come prepared in a new coat and pair of boots, having braved many winters in the Dairy State. 

 

I was born in Milwaukee, the place where my grandmother’s family settled after emigrating from Sicily in the late 1930s. She spent the war years separated from the man she loved as he served in the Italian army, and she worked in a garment factory, each enduring their own struggles. They married in Sicily after the war, and he accompanied her back to Milwaukee, where they made a home and raised a family.

 

Their story inspired The Last Letter from Sicily. So, it was only fitting that my first public appearances for the novel would be in Wisconsin. 

 

My first event was held at Vintage and Modern Books in Racine, where I was raised and where my author journey truly began. I began writing poetry at an early age, winning an award at 12 for a poem called “Song of the Forest.” I continued writing, and one day, my Horlick High School freshman English teacher, Brian Kelly, recommended I join the Herald newspaper. Writing and reporting on the staff of that paper under the guidance of advisor Dianne Belland ignited a passion for storytelling that would lead me to pursue journalism.

 

Lindsay (second from left) with the Horlick High School Herald staff

 

Boswell Book Company hosted my second event in Milwaukee, where I earned my degree in Communications at Marquette University while moonlighting as an editorial assistant at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

 

Author event at Boswell Book Company

 

I was grateful to have family and friends in attendance at both events. And it was wonderful to connect with readers. I look forward to sharing more and continuing to honor my grandparents’ legacy.

 

Lindsay with her mother, Santa Maria Morris, at Racine’s Vintage and Modern Books

How Sicily’s Earliest Settlers Shaped—and Were Shaped by—the Island’s Landscape

Current archeological evidence suggests that humans first occupied Sicily around 17,000 years ago, which is far more recent than settlement to more remote places like Siberia or Australia. The question of why and how these early occupiers impacted Italy’s largest island is at the heart of the Early Occupation of Sicily Project.

 

Led by Sicilian-born Washington University in St. Louis Assistant Archaeology Professor Ilaria Patania, alongside University of Connecticut Department of Anthropology Chair Professor Christian Tryon and a dedicated team of graduate students and alumni, the project seeks to answer questions about when humans first arrived in Sicily and their ecological impact.

 

Focusing on the region encompassing Syracuse and Ragusa, the Early Occupation of Sicily Project investigates why human settlement in Sicily lagged while examining whether early settlers influenced habitat changes and the extinction of species like tiny elephants and giant swans once found on the island.

The project combines geological mapping and underwater surveys to reconstruct ancient sea levels and migration routes. It has also gotten the local communities involved through citizen science initiatives focused on site preservation and research.

 

By exploring Sicily’s archaeological past, researchers aim to connect historical migration patterns with today’s climate-driven displacement issues. Perhaps it will also shed some light on solutions for our own future.

I recently spoke with Dr. Patania, who shared more about the project and her hopes for its outcome.

 

 

What inspired this project?

I’ve always done paleolithic archeology. I’m a geo-archeologist and an environmental archeologist by training. So, I’m really interested in how we can, as archeologists, contextualize. I’m less interested in what we produce and more in the environment we live in as humans, how we interact with it, and how we adapt to it. I have a very personal experience of traveling a lot and having to adapt to different places. I’m from a very warm place. I went to school in Boston, where it was very cold. And climate today is such a critical issue for everybody. My experience is that it impacts us no matter what. And it has impacted us.

 

One thing that I’ve also always been interested in is the very first wave of migrations of humans to a new place. It’s not easy to arrive in a new landscape. How do they deal with it? What do they do? You need to know where water is, where food is, and what helped us because the reality is that we really moved a lot in a matter of a couple of hundreds of thousands of years. We colonized the entire planet, and we reached places that were almost unthinkable.

 

I think empathy is one of the things that allowed us to do this. The fact that other groups of Sapiens, Neanderthals, or Denisovans that were already on that landscape recognized their similarities with the newcomers. And they were able to help and guide us. And if we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t have been as successful at the very beginning.

 

Why are you studying southeastern Sicily in particular?

The reason why we’re studying this area is more geological. This is an area on the African plate, not on the European plate, which means that tectonically speaking, it is quite stable, so there’s no uprising of the coast. So, if you go to the north, all the coasts you see today are 80 to 160 meters higher than during the last glaciation, which means that where the first people arriving here walked is quite different from where it is today.

 

If you go to the southeastern portion, we have an uplift that goes between four and 12 meters, which is quite negligible. So we see something that was also seen by the first inhabitants, and it was pretty much in the same position. Of course, there was erosion and human impact, but more or less, we can reconstruct it.

 

Tell us about the time period you are researching and how Sicily looked.

This was a time period when the globe underwent glaciation. There’s only a finite amount of water on Earth, and a lot of it is trapped in the ice caps, which means that the sea retreats during glaciations and comes back up. So, what is happening today with the rising sea levels? They’re rising because the ice is melting, right? The opposite was true for the last glaciation, which was the time when the first humans arrived in Sicily. This means we are working on a landscape 100 meters to 120 meters farther offshore. These people had way more land to deal with to accommodate them.

 

Another piece of the puzzle is that because of that sea retreat, the island of Sicily was connected to the mainland of Italy, creating an actual land bridge, but also to the island of Malta, where there was another quite large bridge. Sicily was in the middle of this highway, which possibly brought people to Malta through Sicily. So that is one of the big questions: Did people come through Sicily and go to Malta? We are pretty sure that people came from Italy to Sicily.

 

At this point, the earliest homo sapiens in Northern Africa were from 300,000 years ago. Homo sapiens started coming out of Africa, traveling up the Levant. Eventually, they spread to places like Siberia 45,000 years ago.

 

Yet, there was nothing in the Mediterranean. At least they were getting their feet wet in that same sea and walking around that basin, yet they were not able to colonize the islands even if they could see them. And it might not be a matter of seafaring because between 65,000 and 45,000 years ago, we know that they could seafare the ocean because they arrived in Australia.

 

But they didn’t seem able to colonize this basin. Most scholars agree that the reason why is the low trophic level and the strong and unpredictable currents of the Mediterranean.

So, the current hypothesis is that we cannot settle these landscapes unless we have the knowledge of goats and sheep, for example, if we bring them or grain with us and we start growing things. This seems to be true for most of the islands except Sicily—possibly because Sicily is so large—that if you have a small enough population, you might be able to survive.

 

Questions still open are: Did Sicily have such a small population that it took so long to really populate this island and colonize it? How long did it take us to move from one side to the other and eventually into Malta if we ever did that?

 

What impact did early humans have on Sicily’s environment and vice-versa?

People think of humans in the past as being in tune with nature. In reality, that’s not true. Humans are destructive at different degrees. Of course, our civilization today is one of the most destructive for the planet because of sheer numbers and the kind of technology we have that requires certain things. But we’ve always been like that. For example, when we arrived in pristine environments, we often hunted, killed off many animals, and eventually created a cascade effect and mass extinctions. So our questions are, did we do that in Sicily, and how did we do it?

 

Part of the work involves diving to find hidden evidence.

What methods have you used to trace human dispersal?

Our protocol has several steps. We start with archival work. This landscape hasn’t really been studied a lot, scientifically speaking. This is a landscape where Greek and Roman archeology is way more popular and makes more money, touristically speaking. But that doesn’t mean that local people are not interested in it.

 

There have been a few local vocational archeologists who have spent their entire lives after work and on their weekends walking this landscape. And a few of them actually did a great job of recording everything that they found. So we’re going through all of the local publications, small historical bulletins in towns, et cetera, and trying to catalog as many of these finds from vocational archeologists as possible. Then we try to find them again, and we assess them in a very archeological way if we know that people have already excavated some sites. And we try to find the collections in the museums, and we analyze those.

 

We have found and analyzed two collections fully. During our foot surveys, we try to look at all of the caves that we find. So, while we relocate the other caves, we are also exploring new caves and trying to see if there’s anything promising.

 

Underwater, we take a very similar approach. We start from the archival. We also do surveys. We walk the coast, swim or snorkel in certain areas, and dive in others.

 

We use a lot of citizen scientists. We have trained people to recognize stone tools and fossils. And so we ask every year we go back if they found anything. We have a reporting system in place for the underwater. This has worked particularly well.

 

What do you hope people take away from your research?

Archaeology is all about pretty objects like the Vase Museum. I don’t think that’s what archeology is. I think it’s really about who we are as humans. 

 

I think empathy is a big part of our survival, especially when it comes to successful migrations, occupying new territories, and exploring new things. We, as a community, have accomplished a lot. We’ve always found a way to survive and go on. But at the same time, we’ve also very often destroyed the landscape around us, so we could learn from that.

A colleague the other day said something that really struck me: “We can’t science ourselves out of this climate crisis, but we can definitely anthropology our way out.”

 

Scientifically speaking, this climate crisis is indeed happening and is caused by humans. The issue, to me, is around how people react to this fact, and that is something we can look at through anthropology and archaeology.

 

We often forget the value of knowing our past and learning about it. I think the Paleolithic is a good place to start because it’s stripped of the pretty flashy objects that often take attention away from the core issues. 

 

 

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From Upcycled Art to Restoration: Stefania Boemi’s Ode to Sicily’s Rich Heritage

Whether she’s upcycling discarded materials or working with clay and sand from Mount Etna, Stefania Boemi‘s works serve as a heartfelt tribute to Sicily’s rich history. The sustainably minded artist hand-sculpts her own version of the iconic teste di moro, crafts chandeliers with remnants of holy cards, reupholsters furniture with antique fabrics, reimagines Sicilian puppets using doll heads and lithographed tin boxes, and sews hammocks from traditional bedspreads. Her artistry extends to her ambitious restoration of a more than 1,000-year-old Arabic paper mill into a sanctuary for art and cultural events.

 

I recently had the opportunity to connect with Stefania, who shared her background, drive, process, and more.

 

You are originally from Bronte. How did that factor into your artistic journey?

I believe that growing up in a place where boredom is abundant gives creative minds the opportunity to explore various ways to fill time. Creating something from nothing or very little is one of these possibilities. I think that if I had grown up in a city and had been one of many children with days filled with pre-arranged activities by parents, like swimming, dance, or English lessons (just to name a few examples), I probably would have become something entirely different.

 

Your training is in physiotherapy; what influence has this had on your art?

I worked full-time for almost 20 years in neurorehabilitation, a branch of physiotherapy that exposed me to devastating, often dire illnesses and connected me with people with whom I formed deep bonds. The contact with their suffering and the opportunity to help them navigate their difficult days taught me a great deal and inevitably shaped my worldview. But at a certain point, I felt the need to give space to parts of myself that hadn’t had the time to be “cultivated.” That’s where the choice to split my life between physiotherapy (which I still practice) and art came from. I would say that the creative part of me influenced my approach to physiotherapy, not the other way around!

 

Stefania Boemi
 

What drives your passion for sustainability in art, and how do you select materials?

Nowadays, there’s a lot of talk about ecology, eco-art, “green” practices, and sustainability. These topics have become “trendy!” But for me, it’s simply about love and admiration for the beauty of nature. These sentiments, if we can call them that, were inherited from my mother. I grew up in the countryside, and after a long pause living in the city four years ago, I chose to return to live amidst nature. It feels natural for me to be “sustainable” in everything I do. The materials I choose are either “repurposed” (like the bedspreads I use for hammocks, the crystals for my chandeliers, or the lithographs for my cushions) or sourced locally (like clay or sand from Mount Etna). The connection to the island is strong, omnipresent, and indispensable in both cases.

Stefania frequently repurposes vintage materials.

Tell us about your creative process.

Describing the creative process behind my pieces is quite difficult for me. In most cases, it’s an instinctive spark. Once that spark ignites, the step to realization is immediate and materializes through a sequence of trials and errors—until exhaustion! I study the results and explore possible solutions. My hands are the instruments of my imagination, and controlling the material becomes both a pleasure and a surprise. When I recognize poetry in the achieved form, the creative process is complete for me.

 

Teste di moro reimagined by Stefania Boemi

How do you incorporate Sicily’s culture and history into your work?

I think I achieve this through the choice of materials. Clay is Sicilian soil, and the teste di moro, with their legend, tell a piece of the island’s history. The association and identification happen naturally, and in this case, obviously. Other pieces have more secret ties, perhaps less evident. They involve the reuse of materials/objects with a past story linked to local customs and habits. Our roots are important. They need to be preserved. They tell us who we are and our identity. They allow us to differentiate ourselves and maintain a world with millions of diverse peoples, each with their traditions, colors, customs, and habits. And that’s simply wonderful. Imagine how boring the world would be if we were all the same!

Red teste di moro by Stefania Boemi

 

Are there any upcoming projects you are particularly excited about?

Yes, there are new projects on the horizon that also involve my current artistic production in some way. But the project is much broader. Four years ago, I fled the city and purchased an estate on the banks of the Simeto River. It includes the Arabic Paper Mill of Ricchisgia, a building dating back to the year 1,000. It was constructed by the Arabs during their domination of Sicily, with 26,000 square meters of land cultivated with pistachios and olives. The Paper Mill, after the Arabs left, was transformed into a convent and inhabited by the Benedictine and Basilian orders for about three centuries. The entire property was later donated to Count Nelson, who became the Duke of Bronte. It remained in his family’s possession until the 1970s. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of this little-known, secret place, which is part of an important minor historical heritage. It became my place in the world and my world. Here, I live and work surrounded by unspoiled nature, with rhythms and habits vastly different from those I previously had. I am personally involved in restoring and rehabilitating this extraordinary space. It’s a complex project, challenging on many levels, especially financial. But it has become a life project. I’ll host art and events. There’s still much to do, but so much has already been accomplished. When I finish (if I ever do), I’ll be able to say it was the most beautiful work I’ve ever done.

 

Medusa by Stefania Boemi

What advice would you give young artists?

I came across this writing by Rainer Maria Rilke, which encapsulates everything I could advise:

My daughter, if you feel a fire within,
a light burning deep inside,
don’t smother it with the doubts of the world,
don’t extinguish the fire with fear.
The path of the artist is long and uncertain,
but full of hidden treasures;
every brushstroke, every note, every word
is a step toward your truth.
Don’t seek the approval of others,
don’t expect applause at every step.
Art lives within you,
a silent song that only you can hear.
Create out of love, my daughter,
not for success or fame,
because true art is born from the heart,
not from the hands of those who judge.
You are young, and the world is vast,
full of dreams to paint,
of sounds to capture,
of stories to tell.
Be brave, and never stop searching,
because the artist never finds the journey’s end,
but only new roads to explore,
new skies to paint with the stars.

Perseo and Andromeda by Stefania Boemi

What do you hope to share through your art?

In my view, art has the duty to evoke emotions. I hope to succeed in offering this—a small emotion.

 

 

Upcycled and reupholstered by Stefania Boemi

 

 

 

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How Z&M Twisted Vines Blends Tradition, Sustainability, and Community

With two parents from Mazara del Vallo, Sicily, Gina Montalbano’s upbringing was rooted in tradition. Part of that was recognizing that her family had ties to viticulture. Her father had worked in vineyards, and she always heard about her mother’s family wineries and vineyards. 

After a career in education for Gina, who holds a doctorate in educational leadership, and in the Army for her husband, Bryan Zesiger, a retired Major, the Kansas-based couple found themselves drawn to winemaking and decided to pay Gina’s Sicilian family a visit in December 2018.

“We were driving down this road with Gina’s cousin, and there are vineyards all on both sides,” remembers Bryan. “We’re in this little Fiat, and I’m like, ‘Hey, when are we going to see your vineyard?’ Because I was thinking he’s got a little section. He goes, ‘Oh no, these are all of our vineyards.’”

It was an eye-opener. “We were like, ‘What we’re doing in Kansas is small in comparison,’” says Gina. 

Their former home operation has evolved into Z&M Twisted Vines Winery and Vineyard, which has a Lawrence, Kansas, vineyard and tasting room and a Downtown Leavenworth, Kansas, winery. 

Gina and Bryan remain resourceful, turning mistakes into opportunities and waste into treasured products. It’s part of learning and growing but also core to their identities.

“That’s part of my heritage,” Gina says. “And so that pulls through with Bryan’s military endeavors. He’s lived around the world where people don’t have what we have. We’re always thinking of how to repurpose and reuse things and make the best of a bad situation. That’s how we ended up just trying to build variety within what we do.”

 

Gina shared more about the journey, influences, challenges, and Z&M’s sustainable practices. 

 

 
Z&M opened its vineyard to the public in 2020 and hosts regular events.

How did you get started?

Bryan had served 26 years in the Army, and I was an elementary principal. We were both at a point in our careers where we could do something different if we wanted and retire from what we were doing. So, we decided to get started on the endeavor and make wine, not just as a hobby.

 

People were very encouraging, saying, “Hey, you guys should do this. Your wine is really good. I think more people would like it.”

That’s when we bought the building in Downtown Leavenworth, which is a three-story building, but the cellar is where we were producing. And then it has a back garage, so it was kind of like seriously old-school wine-making. We were crushing grapes in the back garage, carrying them down in big totes into the cellar, and making wine in that location—literally handcrafting. 

We had about 300 six-gallon glass carboys; you get about 28 bottles out of a carboy. But as we continued, we were like, “There is no way we can keep up this way with just the two of us, but also in such small quantities.” We needed to be able to do larger batches. So we were like, “OK, we need some land. We’re going to be farmers. Let’s grow our own grapes.”

We bought the property with the Lawrence address in 2019 and planted our vines. They’re on year six, so we get our own harvest and work with other vineyards that don’t have wineries attached to them. Now that we’re big enough and making enough product, we contract with other growers and use our grapes plus theirs, and then we also do lots of other fruit wines. 

We’ve added our own personality and twist to everything. We hope people enjoy hearing our story through the labels of the wine and the flavors we’re putting together. At this point, we craft about 50 different wines: reds and whites, traditional drys, and a little semi-sweet. Those are all Kansas-grown grapes. Everything is made here, from this area, and on our property. 

At the vineyard, the building that we are currently in is a big Quonset. Our harvest center has a wine-making side; we can invite guests for tastings. And so it’s a labor of love, but at the same time, it’s our opportunity for growth. We are adding an automated bottling line. That will change the trajectory of the amount of time it takes us to hand-bottle everything and help us be more efficient with our time and opportunity for distribution.

 

Gina with her family in Sicily

 

How has your Sicilian heritage inspired you?

The very first wine that we made came from my grandfather’s recipe and wine-making techniques, and it’s called Harvest Moon. The label is a throwback to a vineyard with a big harvest moon. It’s one of my family’s white wine recipes. We leave the skins on the grapes, which is kind of an old-school Sicilian tradition because the flavor comes from those. Here in the States, whites are typically just pressed and crystal clear. 

It’s just been a lot of fun because we’ve done some very traditional things as we started our farm winery and utilized some of my grandfather’s recipes.

 

Z&M crafts about 50 different wines with Kansans-grown grapes.
 

What challenges have you faced along the way?

Bryan and I didn’t grow up as farmers, and we’re not from Kansas. I know elementary lingo/education talk, and Bryan knows the military, so we’re learning a new language. 

When we both retired, we lost our communities. It’s like, who are our people? Who’s the go-to person we ask questions? And we’re both very driven to learn as much as we can. We joined as many things as possible to get involved in and learn more. We watched a lot of YouTube videos, and we talked to other people.

 

There was the hurdle of becoming farmers or owning a vineyard in Kansas, a state that hasn’t been super well-known for grape-growing and wine-making since prohibition, and alcohol laws in the state have been slow to change. 

 

Hurdle two was the upscaling of recipes, going from six gallons at a time to 250-gallon tanks and then 500-gallon tanks. There was a point where wine got messed up, and Bryan came back to me, saying, “We have about 500 gallons of wine that I don’t think is going to be OK.” And I’m like, “What do you mean? That’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of time. We’ve got to fix it.”

 

And so I said, “Don’t dump it out. We’re not going to make vinegar. Let’s come up with a new plan.”

 

American brandy is cognac, and cognac is made from white grapes. And so it’s essentially distilled wine that is aged. Bryan learns all this through studies, and he and I are looking stuff up. Before we knew it, we were like, “OK, we can take this wine and distill it and then age it and make it brandy.” 

In our research, we learned we could add brandy back to our wine and make what’s called fortified wine, which becomes an American version of port wines.

 

It allowed us to transition and make a product, so there’s a whole line of wine through this adversity that we now call Double Tap. They are all at 20% ABV and made with our own in-house brandy. It turned out to be a good accident in disguise. 

 

Bella Vino soaps and Twisted Lips 

Speaking of resourcefulness, tell us about your Bella Vino line.

It started with the home wines we were making. I love coffee, just like every Sicilian. So, the concept of “Let’s make a coffee wine” came into play. 

We made our first coffee wine using real coffee beans and ground coffee. One day, we were bottling the coffee wine. We had filtered off and racked off, and a lot of residue was left from the coffee grounds. My stepdaughter Aspen was YouTubing videos while we were working in our basement. 

I had promised her that when we finished, we would do something that she wanted to do. Well, she wanted to make a body scrub. She was looking up recipes for making homemade body scrubs, and we were listening to her videos while we were bottling. And Bryan was like, “Hold on: exfoliant. These coffee grounds are rich, rustic, and scratchy. Maybe we could use those and make our own recipe based on one of these videos you’re looking at.”

 

So, it became the family project that night to make this scrub, and that was the birth of Bella Vino. It didn’t come to fruition as an actual LLC or company until 2019. We had opened the doors, and we were making wines. And we were like, “We should not forget what we were doing with the leftovers.” And so we started the Bella Vino line. There are little chapsticks, sugar scrubs for your lips, and body scrubs. Then we said, “Well, if we make this, we can surely make other products.” 

We found a local farmer’s wife making soap, and I asked, “Do you think you could make soap with the other leftovers I have?” And so we went through that process and figured out how we had to dehydrate things or whatever, but then we could use those fresh leaves from the tanks. And so we started making soaps, body scrubs, and what we call Twisted Lips. (I got to design a little container that looks like a wine glass. And so when you twist off the top of the little wine glass, it’s your chapstick inside.)

 

When we bottle, we end up at the tail end with four or five bottles of what was still left in the lines and the tanks. We didn’t want to put it in a box and tape it closed with only four bottles, so we had all of these boxes with random wines in them.

 

We said, “We should make these into jelly,” and then we started making our wine jelly. So, every single bottle of wine left over from when we finish up those extra bottles becomes jelly. 

Being kind of frugal is a Sicilian thing; it’s just how I grew up. My dad worked, and his English was not great. He became an American citizen, worked at the same factory I can remember as a kid, and built his family of five kids. We all went to college. It’s about hard work and taking pride in who you are; that’s who I am because of my parents. 

I was kid number four, so there were lots of hand-me-downs from my sisters. You don’t always get new things; you’re always thinking of how you can repurpose and not waste stuff. 

 

Z&M Twisted serves appetizers, paninis, hot dogs, and brats with wines, ciders, mocktails, and more.

 

What experience do you hope to share?

Wine doesn’t have to be pretentious; like any good Sicilian cooking, your family meal draws people together.

 

Wine is our way to draw people together. And so we serve food at the vineyard, too. The idea is to reach people of all different ethnicities and age groups. We want them to come for the wine, but it’s the experience they leave with; the idea that it brings people together is part of what we do. 

Grapevine roots are like trees. The deeper the roots go, the better your vines do. So, we want to build deep roots in a community we’re not from. To do that, we must invest time in our community, not just trying to sell wine. That’s never been the goal. 

 

 
Z&M Twisted’s Lawrence, Kansas, vineyard

 

 

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