We all go to the same place. Let us go there slowly.

But Slow Food knows that promoting a product through the media is a temporary solution. Enter the Praesidia. " 'Presidium' is Latin for 'garrison' and conveys our most militaristic approach to defending foods and drinks in danger of extinction," says Martins. A perfect example: Sciacchetra, a rare white wine that is produced only in the Cinque Terre region of Italy, an exquisitely beautiful, hilly area along the Mediterranean. Sciacchetra has been produced in that region since medieval times but has gradually become unprofitable for the remaining producers to make. So, in collaboration with private sponsors and public institutions, Slow Food purchased 20,000 square meters of the Cinque Terre and gave the land to one of the last three Sciacchetra producers in the world. Without the economic burden of rent, explains Martins, "that producer is now able to hire people to help him produce this wine and can pass on the tradition to future generations. In the next several years, we expect production to go from a few hundred bottles to tens of thousands."

Beer Here: Slow Food, American-Style

America -- home of the hamburger, "nuke it 'n' eat it," and express lanes at fast-food restaurants. What could a country filled with superstars of speed possibly want with Slow Food? Plenty, according to Petrini, who believes that America is just about ripe for some slow food. "A lot of Europeans think that America is the empire of badness," he says. "They believe that Americans are the ones who need to be converted -- the barbarians at the gate who need to be civilized. But that's not true. Americans have an enormous capacity to merge tradition with modernity, and they crave a sense of slowness now more than ever." As upstarts on the cuisine scene, Americans might play second fiddle to other nations' food patrimonies. But there's one thing that puts a gleam in Petrini's eyes when he thinks about American-style "slow food": beer. In fact, he believes that beer is one of the purest American expressions of what Slow Food is all about.

That is music to Garrett Oliver's ears. "Slow Food is concerned with preserving and even resurrecting lost traditions," says Oliver, 37, a brew master for Brooklyn Brewery, who has brought several brewing styles back from obscurity and who is widely regarded as one of America's leading brew masters. "At the turn of the century, there were 48 breweries in Brooklyn. Now there is just one." Oliver is responsible for a beer that has ended up on Slow Food's Ark of Taste: Brooklyn Monster Ale, an English-style barley wine that was inspired, in part, by a book called "Every Man His Own Brewer" -- undoubtedly a page-turner when it was published in 1768. "Monster Ale is a slow beer," explains Oliver. "It takes four months to age, rather than the usual two to three weeks. We use a rare type of barley, called Maris Otter, which isn't cultivated much these days. And at 12.3% alcohol, you can't drink it fast. Well, you could, but it would bite your head off."

But Oliver acknowledges that Slow Food is about much more than ensuring that we have more choices than Bud, Bud Light, Coors, and Coors Light -- the "Wonder Breads of Beer," as he calls them -- when we open the fridge at our local liquor store. For Oliver, who grew up in Queens eating his fair share of frozen vegetables and Swanson dinners and drinking coffee made from Folger's crystals, Slow Food offers a way of living that complements his thinking. "If you think about it, some of the best times of your life are probably spent at the table with your friends and family," he says. "So how could you not make the time to secure those moments? What is so important in your life that you can't make time for things that give you pleasure?"

Oliver, a self-proclaimed "overworked American," has little patience for his peers who say that they have no time for such rituals but then spend hours in front of the television. "If you want to enjoy life, you have to think a little bit about what you might enjoy," he says. "The easy -- and lazy -- way out is to convince yourself that you don't have enough time. But we often let time pass by without making any real use of it. Instead, look at your day, and ask yourself, 'What would I really enjoy? What would I like to do? Whom would I like to be with?' " If we let the answers to those simple questions decide how we spend our time, Oliver believes, then we would spend our time differently.

Perhaps one of the best lessons that Oliver has ever learned about the importance of creating islands of slowness in a sea of high-speed frenzy is the one that his father inadvertently taught him. As a high-octane kid, Oliver would become exasperated whenever his father refused to join him in one action-packed activity after another. Oliver remembers asking, "Well, what are you doing that's so important?" His father responded, "I'm doing creative nothing," as he chopped vegetables in the kitchen. Oliver reflects on that response: "I'm 37, and I finally understand what my father meant whenever he would tell me that. To my dad, 'creative nothing' meant hanging out on his island of slowness. He was chilling out, relaxing, thinking -- such simple things, but so many of us no longer know how to do them."