You think of July as a month for harvesting. Picking ripe tomatoes, plucking juicy peaches from the tree, cutting fragrant hay. Yet it’s also a time for planting, of a special, painstaking sort.
Bent double, trowel in hand, the saffron-growers of central Italy are gently heeling into the ground the Crocus sativum bulbs that will produce evanescent mauve-coloured blooms in late October-early November. Harvesting will also involve protracted bending. Each flower must be plucked by hand and gently transported to a dry environment where it will be divested of its deep red stigma.
It is these threads, duly dried, that are prized for their depth of flavour and hue. Peppery, warm and aromatic, good saffron is a gastronomic treat on a par with truffles. It lends itself to both sweet and savoury cuisine, enflaming dishes with its deep, reddish yellow and elevating them with a delectable subtlety of taste.
Saffron has always thrived best where a hot Mediterranean breeze rakes across arid ground. Because its cultivation still requires backbreaking labour and nimble hands, its value has not been diminished by the globalised post-industrial economy.
The commercial saffron growing capital of Italy has long been the region of Abruzzo. There’s a historic growers’ cooperative near the city of Aquila, perched in a wide plateau at 700 metres above sea level, between the Gran Sasso and the Ocre mountains. However, in recent years the growers seem to have lost their focus, with the result that most of the supermarket saffron found in Italy comes from much further afield: Spain, Greece, Turkey, India...
Fortunately, at the same time there has been a return to small-scale saffron cultivation in various parts of Tuscany, with the Val d’Orcia taking the lead. The Brandi family of San Quirico d’Orcia are now the largest independent growers in the country. From one and a half hectares of clayey soil they produce a premium annual yield of 10,5 kilos. Now, that may not sound like a lot. But put it this way: saffron is sold in tiny packets or jars containing one gram, which requires from 100 to 150 individually plucked stigmas. The very finest may fetch as much as €25 per gram. Rather more than the price of gold.
