With the 1998 edition the Nonino Risit d’Aur Prize has resumed the motivations of its birth, to reaffirm the millennial values of rustic civilization. We understand and know that today it would be impossible to go back to the man pulled plough, to the tillage of the ground with the hoe, to the manuring with the burn beat: the fast increase of the population of the Earth implies the use of great mechanical means, of fertilizers, of planned cycles for the cultivations, of great watering plants, and of the chemical fight against the parasites. However … where in the country there are still men that are able to use the gifts nature gives us and who are able to offer us high quality products without the greediness of high profits, we will go to look for them to award them and mention them as the well-deservers of civilization..

As in 1975 the Jury of the Risit d’Aur Prize has managed to impose itself drawing the attention of politicians and technicians on the precious autochthonous vine varieties obtaining the authorization to their growing after three years of fights (and today we know how much the wines produced with these grapes are appreciated and requested at international level), so now we have decided to fight to maintain and increase the production of those food treasures that the tradition and the quality of the primary product make the precious patrimony of civilization which, unfortunately, the hubbub of the media, a non civil progress and a bureaucracy that is an end in itself would like to make disappear.

For this 1998 edition, as an example of the values we stick to, the Jury of the Risit d’Aur awards Rino Lestuzzi, salami producer in Percoto, who for the loyalty to the tradition and for the artisanal professionalism offers us a product rich of the rare ancient values. The Jury awards also Lino Turello, cheese maker in Lavariano, a small village in the Municipality of Mortegliano, who with great passion and the difficult dairy art is able to produce a kind of cheese that recalls the tastes and smells of our childhood; precisely according to the seasons with the characteristics of the herbs and hays.

The Jury of the Nonino Risit d’Aur Prize presided by Mario Rigoni Stern and composed by Ulderico Bernardi, Antonio Calò, Giannola Nonino/Secretary this year has left from this Friulian land where the Prize was born, but starting from the next edition its aim is to touch all Italian regions one after the other and maybe even European, supporting those producers that want to fight for the protection of the food treasured that somebody would make anonymously uniform.