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Taste the local delicacies! Harvest time & grape picking
[Susan Glasspool]
In September, wherever you look, you can see vineyards bursting with lush red and golden grapes and groups of people working their way down the fields, picking them. The countryside is dry and the leaves are already beginning to change colour before finally falling when the autumn proper sets in. If you get the chance to visit a farm during this period, the atmosphere is merry, for grape picking is tiring but enjoyable, and as most farms offer meals to the pickers, also convivial. The grapes are then pressed (and not by stamping on them in vats as in the past, now only shown n films), and the wine-making process is started. The novello wine (not for preserving but for drinking at once) is usually ready in early November and has a unique taste that obviously varies according to the type of grape, where it is grown, etc.
Try the local schiacciata con l’uva (tiny grapes crushed and cooked on flat bread), a typical country dessert or snack, made and served during the vendemmia or grape harvest. Delicious when properly made! In September you can still find many fresh products from the vegetable garden, tender baby marrows, many kinds of lettuce, spinach and beet, huge juicy tomatoes, bunches of sweet-smelling basil and parsley or fruit like figs, peaches, melons, plums and pears, though the first apples, persimmons and large winter marrows (ready for Halloween), are already appearing on the market as a sign of the coming autumn. By October the first chestnuts appear to herald the approaching winter.
This is the time for making jams and preserves, bottling tomatoes to open later during the winter, though in the south they are also sun-dried or transformed into tomato paste. Pine kernals are collected to use during the winter or to make some late pesto to use up some of the brilliant green basil leaves (which can also be very successfully frozen). Or wild fennel seeds are picked for drying and the hunt begins in the hills and mountains for the first tiny mushrooms. If the weather holds they can be dried for later use. This is also the time to taste some of the processed hams and cheeses for which Italy is so famous, from ham proper to the countless types of salami - figs for instance are delicious with Tuscan ham!
And soon it will be time for the new olive oil...
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