How informal gatherings, mixed crowds and a little unpredictability are changing the way we experience wine and food together
The new face of food and wine events: less lecture, more table
There is an old way of doing tastings and a new way. In the first, an expert talks and the audience listens. In the second, wine and food are the excuse for something more interesting: a conversation between people who didn’t know each other an hour ago.
The second way works better. And I’m not saying that from hearsay.
Less explaining, more listening
When I started organising events in Kraków with Buona Idea, I made a deliberate choice: to leave space. Space for questions, for personal impressions, for the spontaneous comments of someone tasting something for the first time. Space above all for conversations between guests, without interrupting them with technical explanations nobody asked for.
It doesn’t mean giving up on quality content — it means knowing when the host’s silence is worth more than a lecture on tannins. People who come to a tasting want to learn, of course. But they also want to feel good.
Classic and fusion: not a contradiction
Another thing I’ve learned from organising events is that the audience doesn’t want to be pigeonholed. Someone who loves natural wines is often curious to discover a great Barolo. Someone who has never tasted a traditional Italian dish can be struck by a homemade focaccia from Bari, but also by a guabao prepared with local ingredients.
That’s why I deliberately alternate: classic wines and natural wines, dishes from the Italian tradition and fusion influences. Not to please everyone, but because curiosity is best trained when you don’t know exactly what to expect.
The venue changes everything
A private apartment, a bar in the city centre, a garden in spring, a cellar outside the city. Each space tells a different story and changes the way people relate to each other and to what they’re drinking and eating. A tasting in a garden at sunset has a completely different energy from a winter evening around a wooden table. Both work — but for different reasons.
Choosing the right venue for each event has become one of the most creative parts of the work for me.
Kraków’s cosmopolitan crowd
There is something magical that happens when you put six, seven, eight different nationalities around the same table. At Buona Idea events in Kraków it’s the norm: expats from all over Europe and the world, curious Polish locals, people passing through who heard about the evening by chance. Each with their own background, their own habits at the table, their own relationship with wine.
And yet they always get along. More than that: they often become friends. I have seen real friendships born over a glass of Barbera and a plate of lasagna. I have heard guests suggest themes for future evenings — and some of those suggestions became my most successful events.
This, in the end, is the new face of food and wine events: not a lesson, not a show. A shared table — in the most literal sense of the word.
Gioacchino — Buona Idea, Kraków