In the past, chestnut flour was the only resource for the families in this area, ‘the poor man’s bread’! Today it has been revived as a guarantor of local tradition becoming a symbol of our cultural heritage
We are doing our part in this heritage conservation. We have restored the antique metato for fire drying the chestnuts. This process requires a slow controlled fire, therefore taking a long time: 50 days during which the aroma of slow-roasting chestnuts flavours the air. We discard the bad ones (poco buone) and turn the good ones into our delicious flour. Fried chestnut slices, roasted chestnuts, and chestnut cakes are made following traditional recipes. Have you ever tasted chestnut cakes, bread, beer or brandy?
In October, we invite you to taste our small, sweet and hard to find chestnuts. They are roasted over coals (“frugiate”) or boiled in water with wild fennel (“ballotte”) or in the rich Montebianco dessert. After drying, they are beaten by the hammers of a cunning machine, which separates the chestnuts from their shells. The shells are then stored until the following year and used to feed the slow fire.
Autumn is a convivial season that offers the opportunity for story-telling while selecting the chestnuts by hand. Only a careful sorting guarantees the quality of the flour. And the discarded ones don’t go to waste but rather to the pigs!
Within our estate is a shop where you can buy olive oil, honey, chestnut flour and pork meat. On request we also organize tastings in the cellar.
