CASA CAPONETTI

Thank you everyone. Thank you Dan Barber, Michael Anthony, Daniel Humm for being part of the community using my oil in the North East, and thank you Laura Stec, Russell Moore and Arnon Oren using it in California, the land of the other great olive oil producers. I’m honored to be sharing what I’m doing with you. Thank you to all the other chefs, from Loretta Paganini who made Ohio a familiar place for me, to Mark Medina-Rios who showed me that even skinny guys can handle great food, and thank you Jeremy McMillan for teaching me another use of my oil, one that I would have never thought possible and yet has become one of my favorites. Thank you Peter Greweling for never answering emails, phone calls or carrier pigeons, and yet being there, ready and fast, when the time came. Thank you doofus Lou Perella for proving it possible to forge a brilliant career in NYC still taking things lightheartedly and not losing the meaning of life, I wish there were more like you around in NYC - or anywhere else. Thank you mum for feeding me some of the best food in the world – non-pedigreed, maybe, but surely winning the award of two meals a day over decades, and never the same. All of you have inspired me, and I am proud my product is used by people like you. Thank you Max Dorigo for producing great photos from what was only in my mind and for being there even while you were traveling across the five continents and I called to say Miss March wasn’t shiny enough or Miss June had an invisible spot that didn’t look right. Thank you, thank you, thank you heroic Stephanie Stibbard for dealing with me while putting all this together, I know it is only an euphemism to say that it was not an easy task. Thank you to all the people who contributed one way or the other to the calendar and don’t find their names on it: thank you Lani Raider, you’re the one who started all this - who would have said it could get this far? Thanks to all of the Alexes, Amys, Caitlins and Irenes who were there when a picture wasn’t right or a restaurant logo didn’t come through, and especially a big thank you to everyone who helped on the farm during harvest for pretending they were doing what I wanted, while in fact they were having fun just as much as I was. Thank you Raffaele Rocchi and Tommaso and Fausto at the pressing facility for 15 years of letting it go when during pressing I felt the need to adjust knobs that needed no adjustment at all. Thank you first Etruscan who introduced olive tree cultivation on the grounds of central Italy, and thank you hundreds of generations of people who worked over the centuries to select and convert those trees into the Canino variety I’m so happy to be dealing with today, and thank you people who built the church of San Pietro over the hill, providing the best landscape in the world to be working in. I’m blessed to be dealing with your legacy; all of you have been of great inspiration for me to try and do my best to respect, reproduce and pass on what you have done. Thank you, in the end, you unknown buyer of this calendar for joining the celebration of a great product, and for supporting what we’re doing. You’re the one who keep us going.

Lorenzo Caponetti
Tuscania, Italy



Calendar photos: Max Dorigo, maxdorigo.it
Concept and text: Lorenzo Caponetti
Design: Stephanie Stibbard
All chefs’ photos, text, and food photos property of chefs.