APULICA / FRUIT, VEGETABLES AND PULSES
Fiaschetto tomato of Torre Guaceto
Slow Food Presidium · Fruit, vegetables and pulses · Puglia
In brief
- A sweet, juicy small tomato landrace that keeps well, revived in the Torre Guaceto nature reserve at Carovigno. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto)
- In the Brindisi area it was the tomato for home-made winter passata. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto)
- In the reserve it is grown organically, with little brackish water and no synthetic chemicals. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto)
- Harvest starts in mid-June and continues through the summer. (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto)
History and origin
The fiaschetto is the tomato of the Torre Guaceto Nature Reserve, the protected wetland on the Brindisi coast between Carovigno and San Vito dei Normanni. Here the Mediterranean scrub of the shore gives way, further inland, to ancient olive trees, cereals and vegetable gardens, and among the vegetables this variety stands out, grown in the reserve for generations.
In the Brindisi area it was the tomato for home-made passata, prepared in summer for the winter. It was once far more widespread; then its cultivation shrank to a few farmers who kept to the traditions handed down from father to son, and today it might have disappeared without their tenacity and that of a few small local farms.
It has been a Slow Food Presidium since 2008. Research by the regional BiodiverSO project found elderly keepers in the reserve who still preserve old forms of it, confirming the biodiversity held in these gardens.
Sources: BiodiverSO (PSR Puglia, Università di Bari e CNR) — Torre Guaceto e la biodiversità del pomodoro fiaschetto · Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto · BiodiverSO — Uno degli ultimi anziani custodi del pomodorino fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto
Area and method of production
In the reserve the fiaschetto is grown organically, without synthetic chemicals and with little water, which here is brackish. The calendar still follows religious feasts: transplanting is done, as in the past, on Saint Joseph's day in March, and picking begins on 13 June, Saint Anthony's day, continuing through the summer.
Today cultivation is carried on by a few farmers, some of whom grow only for their families in small gardens within the reserve, and by a few farms that over the years have selected the best plants for processing.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto · BiodiverSO (PSR Puglia, Università di Bari e CNR) — Torre Guaceto e la biodiversità del pomodoro fiaschetto · BiodiverSO — Uno degli ultimi anziani custodi del pomodorino fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto
How to recognise it
The fiaschetto is a sweet, juicy small tomato, well suited to preserving. There is not just one fiaschetto, though: in their research the BiodiverSO team found variants with slightly different shapes and colours among the various growers.
An elderly keeper in the reserve grows one row of a slightly elongated form, which he considers the truly «original» one, and another that is rounder. These differences reflect the diversity kept in the gardens of Torre Guaceto, where other local tomatoes, artichokes, pulses and the area's traditional fruit trees grow alongside the fiaschetto.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto · BiodiverSO (PSR Puglia, Università di Bari e CNR) — Torre Guaceto e la biodiversità del pomodoro fiaschetto · BiodiverSO — Uno degli ultimi anziani custodi del pomodorino fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto
In the kitchen
The fiaschetto's traditional destiny is passata: tomato sauce made in summer and kept for the winter, which in the Brindisi area families made with this small tomato.
The farms in the reserve also turn it into semi-dried tomatoes in oil, as well as passata, and these products are sought after throughout Italy and abroad.
Making the sauce was a family ritual: everyone took part, and the oldest woman, the most experienced, had the task of adding the salt.
Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto · BiodiverSO (PSR Puglia, Università di Bari e CNR) — Torre Guaceto e la biodiversità del pomodoro fiaschetto
Where to taste it
Look for the fiaschetto at Torre Guaceto, the nature reserve of about 1,200 hectares between Carovigno and San Vito dei Normanni, a few kilometres from Brindisi: a landscape that rises from the coast and the Mediterranean scrub to the olive groves and gardens where it grows.
The reserve has hosted, in the courtyard of its visitor centre and among its botanical gardens, the Markets of the Land and Sea organised with Slow Food, which brought together producers from all over Puglia around the eco-gastronomy of the area.
The best time is from mid-June to the end of summer. Torre Guaceto is a short distance from Ostuni and Brindisi: it combines a day at the sea with a visit to a garden of biodiversity.
Sources: BiodiverSO (PSR Puglia, Università di Bari e CNR) — Torre Guaceto e la biodiversità del pomodoro fiaschetto · BiodiverSO — I Mercati della Terra e del Mare di Torre Guaceto
Protection
- Slow Food Presidium — pomodoro-fiaschetto-di-torre-guaceto (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Pomodoro fiaschetto di Torre Guaceto)
When
- The sources consulted give no months.