|
Le
Visciole di Cantiano
Scientific
classification of Prunus cerasus denotes a tree with straight branches and big leaves
that, at the beginning of every summer, fruits with red pulpy visciole
(sour cherries).
Original
from the Balkans, this fruit adapted well to the mild climate of the
Marches, especially on the hills of Cantiano
where, at the slopes of Mt Catria, dense sour cherry trees grow
spontaneously.
This
fruit, rarely found elsewhere and very much requested, is therefore often
associated to Cantiano. With their particular flavour, sweet and acid at
the same time (very often confused with bitter cherries), visciole are
ideal basis for jams, wines, liqueurs and treacle still today prepared
according to old customs and strictly connected to different family
traditions.
At
Renaissance banquets, cooked flesh of visciole accompanied sumptuous
dishes due to its power to moderate the particular flavour of game and to
facilitate the digestion. Today those brilliant wild cherries are used for
preparation of exquisite and inimitable jam
called visciolata or to help
the flavour of some red wines.
Pellegrino
Artusi,
19th century refined and famous cook recommends preserving them
in guazzo: to leave them soften
with sugar and cinnamon in glass jars. As Artusi says, they
do not need spirit, they make it themselves.
After a month is passed, visciole are completely immersed in their sweet
treacly liqueur.
Today,
very few farms in the area of Cantiano work visciole. They follow somewhat
changed procedures, in order to guarantee high quality treacly products,
jams and other tasteful specialities thanks to which those precious purple
fruits can be preserved and can prove their value in distant angles of the
world.
At
small distance from Cantiano (still on the territory of Pesaro), other
trees of visciole count their seasons. Their fruits are not to be
transformed in sweet mixtures nor are left to patiently wait hermetically
closed in their jars: with a rare touch of magic they will become Visner.
But, that's another story...
© 2001
Liberation Ventures Ltd.
|