This was the second great honour bestowed upon Bottura in two weeks. On 4 April the local boy made good was awarded the Medaglia d’Oro – “gold medal” – from the commune of Modena (photos here).

photo from Fotoservizio Benito BENEVENTO

So which meant more to the two-Michelin-starred Bottura, the recognition from the worlds’ most accomplished chefs or the show of respect from a city of some 180,000 people famous for the production of Balsamic vinegar, sports car engines and Luciano Pavarotti?

I received what was maybe the hint of an answer from the avant-garde chef and artisanal Balsamic producer on Monday night.

“I just got the gold medal from my town,” the elated Bottura told me on the Guildhall stage he was sharing with Rene Redzepi and Andoni Luis Aduriz, Heston Blumenthal and Grant Achatz. “They recognise what I do.”

That kind of acknowledgement might mean more to a chef in Italy, where stubborn traditionalists may regard gastronomic innovators as traitors. I myself travel Italy as a preservationist preferring simple, old-fashioned trattorias to posh, cutting-edge restaurants. The enemies of Italian invention come from without and within.

“I look at the past not with nostalgia but with creativity,” noted Bottura, defining nostalgia as sentimental praise reserved for the tortellini made by one’s grandmother or the Parmigiano-Reggiano – a speciality of Emilia-Romagna, his home region – from one’s distant past. “Let me tell you, we now have the most beautiful Parmigiano.”

“You must not forget your roots,” added the modernist of Modena, a kitchen magician who transforms Parmigiano cheese into air in his signature ensemble Five Different Ages of Parmigiano-Reggiano in Five Textures. “We are raised on the most beautiful foods. Our techniques, our ideas are in service of those products. This is the future.”

L’omino con i baffi – “the little man with the moustache” – is closing shop and leaving Italy, much to the consternation of both stovetop espresso and Italian design purists. To cut costs, Bialetti announced it would close its Moka Express production plant in Omegna, 50 miles northwest of Milan, and move it – and its mascot logo – to Eastern Europe. Outsourcing to manufacturers in Eastern Europe and China threatens the survival of the prestigous and once thriving kitchenware industry in the hometown of Bialetti, Alessi and Lagostina.

Ubiquitous in Italy for over 50 years, the moka pot was invented in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, a metals craftsman who experienced his eureka moment while watching his wife do the laundry. He imagined the washing machine she was using in miniature, with its metal basket for clothes replaced by a filter basket for ground coffee. As water boiled in the closed lower vessel of Bialetti’s two-chambered aluminum prototype, steam pressure would force hot water up through the funnel-shaped basket of coffee grounds, forcing intensely flavored coffee up through a center nozzle, only to gurgle down like a dripping fountain to collect in the bottom of the upper chamber. Aromatic fumes would be released through its pouring spout, rousing all within the same walls from their morning slumber.

Lacking the pressure of a modern, pump-driven espresso machine and therefore unable to produce crema, Bialetti’s Moka Express was nevertheless revolutionary for its time, achieving its inventor’s stated goal of “in casa un espresso come al bar” – “an espresso in the home just like one in the bar.” Its ease of use and distinctive Art Deco outline, with octagonal upper and lower chambers tapering gently inward towards their meeting point, made it an icon of Italian design. Refinements and variations notwithstanding, the mechanism is fundamentally unchanged some 75 years later.

Having been guided through Bialetti’s Omega plant by its manager in 2008 it is hard for me to imagine it idle for an hour much less forever. The Moka Express’s cast-aluminum components were lined up by the thousands on a series of conveyer belts. It was as if the survival of a nation depended on their production. 2.8 million units were packed there annually, supplying the estimated 9 of 10 families in Italy who keep at least one little man with a moustache tucked away at home.

I_Borboni is a leading producer and champion of Asprinio di Aversa, an ancient white wine varietal with tree-hugging vines. The winery, which I visited in May, is situated in the town of Lusciano, about halfway between the two provinces where Asprinio is produced, Naples and Caserta. The appellation takes its last name from Aversa, the town in Caserta around which most of the vineyards are found. To grow Asprinio, I Borboni supports a traditionally Etruscan viticultural system known as vite maritata (“married vine”) by which the vines wrap around the tree trunks of poplar trees and climb to heights of 15 metres. This poses special challenges for the grape pickers, hence the made-to-measure scala napoletana.

The wine grower’s Neapolitan ladder is typically only 30 cm (about 1 ft) wide, with steps spaced 40-50 cm (15-20 inches) apart in accordance with the length of the climber’s lower leg. The spacing allows him to plant his foot on one rung and wedge his knee beneath the one directly above it, thereby stabilizing his position as he picks grapes, loads them into a basket and lowers it to the ground on a rope.

Can the origins of the rickety old ladder in Beuys’s sculpture be traced to the Asprinio vineyards of Naples and Caserta provinces? Two points count against the hypothesis:

1. Beuys’s ladder is too short to reach the heights of the poplar trees
2. The artist is said to have purchased the ladder from a landlord in Amalfi.

That said, maybe there are shorter ladders required for younger trees. Or maybe the artist used a segment cut from a longer ladder. The Amalfi Coast is only 23 km (about 37 miles) southeast of Naples – not very far for a ladder to travel. And Beuys did not name his sculpture Scala Amalfitana, did he? In the end, this may be one more tree that art historians will need to wrap their heads around and climb.