3' min read
3' min read
It is called irmana rye and for the moment it is a bet, an experiment that is part of what is called innovation in tradition. A cereal that is grown in the Nicolosi area, on the slopes of Mount Etna, in the province of Catania, and is the only existing cultivation in Sicily. A project carried out by the Serafica family, which has a winery on the southern slope of Etna, created by Andrea Serafica in 1950: having returned from Massachusetts where he worked in tanneries, he decided to start his own company in Nicolosi, his home town. Today, the family business, which over the years has also implemented oil production with investments in both plants and processing with the construction of a new oil mill, is in its fourth generation (Andrea Serafica, Nino Serafica, Giuseppe Borzì and Maria Ausialia Borzì) and for a few years now, thanks to collaboration with the University of Catania, has been the guardian of the Irmana rye, now considered a jewel of Etna's food tradition.
The Serafica family has dedicated itself to the recovery and cultivation of the only Sicilian variety of rye, 'Irmana', from whose flour they produce 'Pane Immanu', a characteristic bread created by mixing rye and semolina flour. Very similar to wheat, rye is a resilient cereal: it resists the cold, which is why it is defined as a mountain cereal, it has low thermal requirements and then, they explain, 'it is a rustic plant that does not want neither fertilisation nor water, by itself this plant also eliminates weeds and therefore no pest control or weeding.
Thanks to a collaborative project with the University of Catania, the Etna Park and the Municipality of Nicolosi, the aim was to reintegrate the cultivation of a cereal grown by Benedictine monks during the post-war period but abandoned over the years: the seeds were recovered almost by chance thanks to an elderly farmer who kept half a kilo in the province of Enna. The Serafica company, which now has the role of guardian of this prized cereal, is therefore the only one to cultivate five hectares of Irmana rye, at an altitude of almost a thousand metres.
"The company today cultivates 5 hectares that yield a little over 10,000 kilograms of grain, so about seven thousand euro of flour (about 50,000 euro at market price),' they explain. 'Obviously these are numbers that can grow and that today see high-profile chefs, bakers and pizza makers requesting this product and showing a significant interest in this Etna 'gem'. Naturally, if demand increases, it would not be difficult to increase the quantity of flour produced'.
The ambition, with changing consumer tastes and new demands, is to grow in the markets. There are still very few bakers and pizza makers who use pure flour but we have recently discovered that even great chefs use this ancient cereal. Few but of great quality to see the names mentioned by the company: there is Niko Romito (three Michelin stars at the Reale restaurant in Castel di Sangro) but it is also used by Forno Biancuccia in Catania, the Hotel San Pietro in Taormina with Luca Miuccio, the Forno Piano Altro in Noto.
