Italy’s favorite poet Gabriele D’Annunzio is famously credited with describing the view from Reggio Calabria’s promenade, where the Mediterranean and Ionian seas meet, as “the most beautiful kilometer in Italy”.
But beyond its stunning vistas, the mixing of the seas and the unique microclimate created by the tapering Apennine mountain range offer idyllic conditions for citrus bergamot.
Cultivated almost exclusively for centuries along the 90-kilometer strip of Ionian coast, the tip of Italy’s boot, the fruit’s essential oil was a prized ingredient in perfumes, luxury cosmetics and even Earl Gray tea, sought after for its complex, citrusy top notes in perfumes and its ability to fix scents on the skin.
“It’s a miracle of nature,” said Ezio Pizzi, president of the Bergamot Consortium, which in 2001 received coveted Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status from the European Union for the essential oil.
“When I think that this plant was brought from Sicily and planted here, 15 kilometers away, in this incredible microclimate that endowed it with incredible qualities.”
Over time, the inhabitants of Calabria discovered the many benefits of the oil obtained from the skin of the fruit harvested while it is still green – from repelling mosquitoes and flies to its powerful disinfectant effect and increasing the longevity and spread of the fragrance.
However, in the late 1960s the invention of synthetic oil caused the value of natural bergamot to plummet, causing landowners to cut down their trees. For almost 25 years, the cultivation of bergamot in the region has stopped.
Then, in the early 90s, the rise of organic products sparked renewed interest, especially from French perfumeries. Pizzi, a member of one of the few landowning families that did not destroy their orchards, gathered a group of producers and restarted essential oil production, forming a consortium.
“We managed to double the price from 18 cents per liter to 36 in the first year,” he said. “Now we even reach a euro per liter.”
Today, says Pizzi, the DOP area in Calabria produces 80 percent of the world’s bergamot.
However, until just over ten years ago, the flesh of the fruit was discarded – mostly fed to animals.
A prized juice once demonized
“I grew up with a mother who told me that if I ate bergamot, my arms would fall off,” said Vittorio Caminiti, a local historian and founder of the small, homegrown National Bergamot Museum., located up the stairs in a side street in Reggio Calabria.
Criminiti says wealthy landowners demonized the fruit’s juice, claiming it was toxic, to prevent local peasants from consuming it, thereby ensuring that bergamot harvesting remained solely under their control for oil extraction. Before industrialization, says that 400 bergamots were needed for just one liter of oil.
“If someone died? He would eat bergamot. If a woman miscarried? She would eat bergamot. All diseases were attributed to bergamot,” he said. “There were too many trees to patrol, so instead of arresting or beating people for eating them, they created a myth.”
In the mid-1990s, Caminiti began experimenting with the juice, eventually realizing that he had to wait for the bergamot to ripen until it was orange enough to eat or drink. He entered the contest with a cake he made with bergamot juice and took home the top prize.
Culinary media in Italy picked up the story, expressing outrage or disbelief.
“I would give them the bergamot recipes and then they would call the head of the bergamot consortium, who told them I was crazy,” he said.
Health benefits
Soon after, the first scientific studies were undertaken in Italy that showed that bergamot juice lowers blood pressure and cholesterol, and later that show potential for diabetes management.
The discovery of the juice’s health benefits has attracted new producers to the market, such as Fabio Trunfio, 50, who runs the farming company Patea Bergamot — a 20-minute drive from Pizzi’s groves.
Trunfio entered the bergamot oil market in 2007, and in 2010 expanded production to juice and fruit sales.
Frustrated, he says, by the failure of Pizzi’s Bergamot Consortium to vigorously promote the juice, he and other producers have launched a bid for their own separate EU label: Protected Geographical Indication (PGI).
Like DOP, IGP focuses on the regional reputation of the product, but offers greater flexibility in ensuring authenticity.
Trunfio and his group are also seeking IGP certification.
“Once we get our IGP, we’ll be able to do our best to publicize the amazing qualities of Calabrian bergamot juice,” Trunfio said, “and finally get government certification confirming the cholesterol-lowering properties of bergamot juice.”
The head of the CSR consortium Ezio Pizzi, however, disputes Trunfio and others’ plan for IGP – seeking to retain control of the product through more exclusive CSR, which he says it deserves. He complains that new growers in the area are flooding the market, driving prices – already hit when duty-free perfume sales were halted during the pandemic – even lower.
As Calabrian bergamot producers fight for control of their brand, the larger issue of climate change looms large. Concerns are growing throughout Italy about the vulnerability of monoculture farming, which is evident in everything from vineyards to olive trees.
But extreme summer temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns have hit southern Italian citrus growers particularly hard. Last summer, intense heat and drought in Sicily turned oranges and lemons into hard, shriveled nuts, and yields fell by as much as 40 percent.
For now, Calabria’s aquifers have been sufficient to compensate for the lack of precipitation, and only a small part of the fruit suffers from the heat. But manufacturers warn that could change.
“We usually stop irrigating in September,” Pizzi said. “It hasn’t rained a drop this year and for the first time in my memory, we’re still watering in December.”
He says he is now negotiating with regional politicians about installing desalination plants or using gray water from sinks, showers or washing machines for irrigation.
But if something is not done soon, Calabria risks losing its hard-earned prize again.
