TerraVITA 2011 brought together some of the finest biodynamic and organically-grown wines and microbrews in the world with some of the very best North Carolina chefs, known and celebrated for their outstanding reputations and chosen for their devotion and allegiance to locally-grown organic ingredients!
We also accomplished so much more than throwing a great party Thanks to donors and those who invested funds by bidding, we raised $4,505 which was directly donated to the four organizations listed below. These funds are very important to these organizations as they allow for further development of special and meaningful projects in our community. The breakout:
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•$2400 to TABLE
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•$1250 to CFSA (Carolina Farm Stewardship Assn.)
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•$755 to CHOP NC
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•$100 to Futures for Kids
Having a specific focus on sustainable practices, one of our big initiatives has been waste diversion from the very beginning. Parties and events can mean many, many bags of trash - especially when close to 500 are in attendance. Muriel Williman and the Orange County Solid Waste Management Group have worked with us the last two years and done such an incredible job. However, each participant (volunteer, attendee, chef, wine distributor, etc.) needs to be invested to pull this piece off successfully!
In the end, at TerraVITA 2011, we tossed less than one large garbage bag in the land fill! By volume, we diverted approximately 850 gallons of waste compared to 30 gallons of garbage - translating into 99.7 % waste diversion.
Participating food artisans and restaurants included On The Square (Tarboro), Table Restaurant (Asheville), Harvest Moon Grille (Charlotte), French Broad Chocolate Lounge (Asheville), Watts Grocery (Durham), Crook’s Corner (Chapel Hill), Chef & The Farmer (Kinston), Chapel Hill Creamery (Chapel Hill), 18 Seaboard (Raleigh), Carolina Crossroads (Chapel Hill), Market Restaurant (Raleigh), Angelina’s Kitchen (Pittsboro), Acme Food & Beverage Company (Carrboro), Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen (Greensboro/Cary), The Pig (Chapel Hill), Escazu Artisan Chocolates (Raleigh), Il Palio (Chapel Hill), Hillsborough Cheese Company (Hillsborough), Organic Bakies (Durham), Farmhand Foods (Durham), Posana Cafe (Asheville), Green Planet Catering (Raleigh), and Sandwhich (Chapel Hill).
In addition, beverage participants included distributors, retailers and importers. Craft brewers PEAK Organic, New Belgium Brewing and Full Sail Brewing Company were side-by-side with SIP... a wine store, De Maison Selections, Sour Grapes, Wine Authorities, Bonterra, Chapel Hill Wine Company, A Southern Season, Gillies Louvet, and Tryon Distributing, as well as Buchi Kombucha, Joe Van Gogh and Carrboro Coffee Company. In all, more than 100 beverage samples were available for tasting.
The Sustainable Classroom featured speakers in four categories: eat, drink, live and grow. Ticket holders attended four different tandem sessions with a choice of four speakers per session. Speakers for the event included Poppy Tooker, master chef and food historian from New Orleans; Fullsteam Brewery's founder Sean Lilly Wilson; Max Kast, wine director and sommelier from Fearrington House, with his brother Alexander Kast, cheesemonger for A Southern Season; Dr. David Shields, chairman of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation and McClintock professor at the University of South Carolina; and many more... A full list of speakers and sessions from the 2011 Sustainable Classroom can be found by clicking here.
