by Diodato Buonora

The last route I followed for the food and wine page of the Unico weekly magazine led me to Cilento, to Rutino, where I had an appointment with Giuseppe Di Fiore, the owner of the biologic farm “Passulara”. After planting wonderful figs in the near Torchiara in 1999, he has been commercializing the authentic DOP* white figs from Cilento for two years. To find them leave the Prignano Cilento exit on the 18 state road (a few kilometres after Agropoli) and follow the road signs which are really perfect in this corner of heaven, in the Swiss style. If you go there you will realize that both the public areas and the private ones are well-kept. In some moments I had the impression to go through a panorama from Val d’Aosta or Alto Adige, this is the sign that here the politicians have committed themselves to save an area which is UNESCO world heritage. Arrived in Rutino I had a nice chat with Giuseppe Di Fiore and I took a long walk in the farm to admire the natural, agricultural and landscape beauties. Di Fiore, who has been interested in the food field for many years, is responsible for wines from Campania of the Partesa group, he is one of the partners of the Barone winery from Cilento and, as I said before, is the owner of the “Passulara”. This farm spreads on six hectares, it includes 2500 fig plants which are only cultivated biologically and are certified by the Is.Me.Cert (Mediterranean Institute of Certification of products and processes of the food field), the institute which controls this DOP product. This plant, which originally came from Southern Arabia, seems to be introduced in Cilento before the sixth century before Christ by the Greek colonists who had founded many towns in this area. Gradually from the half of the fifteenth century  this fruit turned from the “bread for poor people”, as it was defined in the past, to a precious food to be enjoyed above all at Christmas time. The white figs have characterized the Cilento landscape for millenniums. In the last few years these cultivations had almost been abandoned but the recent assignation of the DOP mark gave the opportunity to people like Di Fiore, who love our products and our story, to invest in them, also because our products from Cilento, which are the base of the authentic Mediterranean diet, are in great demand all over the world. The DOP white figs from Cilento refer to the dried figs which derive from the “Dottato” cultivar, a precious kind of fig spread in all Southern Italy. The Passulara farm produces 100 quintals of fresh figs which, when they are dried, become one third of them. They are usually picked from 20 August to 15 September and Di Fiore says that it isn’t very easy to find manpower for a so short period. The products of the farm are dried figs and the “mondi” dried ones, which are addressed to the handcrafted confectioner’s workshops, the “capicollo” made with the “mondi” dried figs, commercialized with the name of “ficollo” (it has the shape of the famous salami) and it is stuffed with almonds, fennels and orange peel and the fig jam in packages of 310 gr. and 30 gr. (the 30 gr. packages are addressed above all to high level restaurants). There are also two novelties: the “Affresco”, a distillate of figs from Cilento (40% alcohol) obtained distilling fresh figs and selected yeasts with an alembic in a bain-marie with indirect steam and the “Essiché”, a liqueur of dried figs from Cilento which is obtained macerating the fruit in absolute alcohol for about 10 days.

* DOP means “Di Origine Protetta” which stands for “Protected Designation of Origin” and this term is used to describe foodstuff which is produced, processed and prepared in a given geographical area using recognized know how.

Head office in via Via S. Cesareo 3. Phone +39 0974 830116 – mobile +39 335 1099781. difioregiu@tiscali.it

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