When in Rome, do as the Romans do. But what do the Romans do when they’re not in Rome? In Flavia Spena’s case, you still do a little of what the Romans do. She talks to Britt Coker about making cheese and celebrating the best of Italy.
We came here back and forth starting from 2015, but we moved here permanently in 2017. My husband was a rugby player, he played professionally in Italy many years ago and when he played a lot of famous Kiwis used to play with him, so we have a lot of friends in the rugby world here in New Zealand. We came for the Rugby World Cup and visiting friends, and in the Italian off season my husband played a couple of seasons in Marlborough in 1996.
We were looking for a place that was different from Rome, so you don’t move to Auckland. If you want to change your life you really look for a good lifestyle, and after we started to come to New Zealand we were wondering what to do, and we are real foodies. At the time we realised that there was not enough good cheese in New Zealand. New Zealand has the best milk in the world but the level of the cheese, especially artisan cheese, was not at that level as much. So we decided that it would be nice to come here, set up a small cheese factory and make very good Italian-style cheese. We went from the north to the south, from Invercargill to Kaitaia, and we were looking for good quality milk, a good relationship with the farmer and a good place to live. All the things we put together in
Nelson, where we also found a little cheese factory.
The weather is very nice. Nelson has the highest number of sunny days. We like being close the sea, we like that it is easy going. It’s like a very good village, good relationships, people are very nice and open, really what we were looking for in terms of relationship and atmosphere.
In a previous job I set up a lot of companies in different countries and I always thought that actually the difference in behaviour of the people is very much linked with the difference in the law and employment system, and here it is the same.
When you come as a tourist is one thing, when you come and work here or start a business you have employees, you have to deal with the law and things, you’re really getting to know the difference much more.
What I think is good about this job [as cheese maker/owner of ViaVio Ltd] is that you have personal relationships. We are at the market. We sell what we make and we talk to the client, and I think it’s so different. In every stage of your life I think you really enjoy different things and this has really come at the right time.
Nelson is really a foodie area. There are all sorts of different things and I think it’s very much appreciated. If you go to the market on Saturday or the Farmers’ Market on Wednesday you see that people really care about the food they are eating. Same thing with restaurants; there are quite good restaurants here and I think this is a very good because sometimes people tend to forget that actually to eat is not only something that you have to do, but you have to enjoy.
We miss the history. Rome is full of history, all the monuments and things, you know. We still have family there so we manage to go at least once a year, but when we are there after a month or two we are happy to come back. So we never really miss it too much because we can go and enjoy it as, say, a visitor in Rome.
When we came here we discovered there was Club Italia and the Italian community. Club Italia has a very old story. It was founded 95 years ago. There were all these tomato growers that came from a little village south of Naples.
They came here and now there are second and third generation families. So the people were poor and they came here to have a job opportunity, they didn’t speak English so they created an environment where the people can be welcome and all speaking the same language, doing the same things, like playing cards and having meals together.
Of course, during the years things change because the Italian here is definitely more Kiwi than Italian. At the beginning we really had a little bit of time to try to understand because the dialect is from one hundred years ago so we cannot even understand it most of the time, so we prefer to speak English. It’s true in every country; should you take some New Zealanders that immigrated 100 years ago and they’ve never been back or very little, they’re different from what New Zealand people are now. At the same time the heart and the spirit and the family environment is the same.
In order to be members you have to be Italian or be of Italian heritage. But some events, like the regular pizza nights, are open to anyone and you sit down together and you enjoy the company.
We want to create Nelson as the centre of Italian culture, at least in the South Island. It’s quite nice to create this recognition. We thought creating an Italian festival celebrating the Italian culture was very good to show to the
people that actually there is a big community of Italians here. We did it last year for the first time. It was small and it was a great success, so we really want to replicate this on a much bigger scale. There will be stalls of food and wine, limoncello, and there will be an Italian chef. She will do a cooking demo to show how to make Italian dishes. We will also have other food businesses, some that are run by Kiwis who make very good Italian products. It will still be at Club Italia and we’re going to close lower Trafalgar Street and have an Italian band playing.
Nelson Italian Festival
Sunday 3 March, 10am – 4pm
Lower Trafalgar Street, Nelson
