Maremma’s wine and food: the result of a secular experience

Maremma’s wine and food are the result of a secular experience in the field of cookery and feeding that contemplates the contribution of the farmer as well as that of the hunter, the fisher, the midwife and of other professional figures, still existing in the area. The very numerous farms produce today as in the past, with the same commitment, refined foods: the bottarga (fish eggs), the salami, the meats, the oil, the honey, not to talk about precious wines as the Morellino di Scansano, one of the kings of Tuscan – or perhaps Italian, or even European – cuisine.

Wide and variagated territory in the heart of Tuscany, Maremma boasts not only of one enogastronomical tradition, but of the most various, born in the different parts of this vast area.

Maremma's wine and food: the Wine
The Maremmas’s system of wines develops along the three wines roads of the territory: the road of Colli di Maremma, that of Monteregio-Massa Marittima and that of Montecucco. The first one is the road of the South Tuscany wine’s sultan, the Morellino, while the second one – which fills the area of Colline Metallifere – offers delicate white and red nectars, fit for combining with Maremma typical dishes, and the third one – the most recent – put on your table a delicious wine, born at the slope of Mount Amiata from ancient grapevines. Irresistible temptation: to taste a wine chalice in the shadow of Medieval and Renaissance buildings, in the most beautiful places of Tuscany, namely of the world.

Maremma's wine and food: the "Acquacotta"

Maremma typical dishes are numberless. Just to tell the name of the area will bring to your memory remembrances of big tortelli made with beet and ricotta cheese, pappardelle dressed with wild boar sauce, dishes of game, country soups with a long, long history of centuries. But perhaps the queen of Maremma cuisine is the renown acquacotta, celebrated in sagre and festivals.
Acquacotta contains a whole culture: still today, it speaks of midwives who, penniless but compelled to feed huge battalions of people, knew how to invent original solutions. Maybe dishes like that will be poor, but they convey a richness of taste, an exuberant flavor to leave in middle distance lobster and caviar. The base recipe was indeed subject to different variants, depending on the fact that were farmers, herdsmen or charcoal-men to cook it, and that it was relished in springtime rather than in fall: the use of spontaneous herbs was dictated by the seasonal offering, but couldn’t be renounced. Shepherds added the result of their job, the cheese, while the charcoal-men added mushrooms or chestnuts found in the woods.

 

Being acquacotta the dish of far-from-home men, usually every group of workers had its own chef assigned to cook it. He could take into account very few ingredients, already present in his “kitchen”: garlic, onions, codfish, sometimes wine, oil. All the rest had to be found in loco and mixed with the supplies. However, the typical ingredient of the soup are the eggs added at the end of the cooking: they give to the dish its strength and “Maremma” decision.
In short, all those looking for ancient flavours, the same that our grandfathers tasted, won’t miss to visit Maremma, where they are kept more than anywhere else, and with the utmost care and love, along the centuries.

Acquacotta contains a whole culture: still today, it speaks of midwives who, penniless but compelled to feed huge battalions of people, knew how to invent original solutions. Maybe dishes like that will be poor, but they convey a richness of taste, an exuberant flavor to leave in middle distance lobster and caviar. The base recipe was indeed subject to different variants, depending on the fact that were farmers, herdsmen or charcoal-men to cook it, and that it was relished in springtime rather than in fall: the use of spontaneous herbs was dictated by the seasonal offering, but couldn’t be renounced. Shepherds added the result of their job, the cheese, while the charcoal-men added mushrooms or chestnuts found in the woods.
Being acquacotta the dish of far-from-home men, usually every group of workers had its own chef assigned to cook it. He could take into account very few ingredients, already present in his “kitchen”: garlic, onions, codfish, sometimes wine, oil. All the rest had to be found in loco and mixed with the supplies. However, the typical ingredient of the soup are the eggs added at the end of the cooking: they give to the dish its strength and “Maremma” decision.
 

In short, all those looking for ancient flavours, the same that our grandfathers tasted, won’t miss to visit Maremma, where they are kept more than anywhere else, and with the utmost care and love, along the centuries.