“A Lovely Bitterness”
Thick-skinned and Vesuvius-cured, this modest tomato is southern Italy’s secret gem
In the Italian province of Campania, Mount Vesuvius keeps quiet vigil over its tomatoes. Small-hold plots wend their way along the volcano’s southern slope, and most of those plots are planted with Italy’s most famous tomato — the “San Marzano” of red sauce fame. But a very few hectares are sewn with the seeds of a lesser-known variety: a pointy-tipped, thumb-length oddball called the piennolo. Pasquale Imperato is a grower of this tomato.
Its flavor is what Pasquale calls Amorevolmente Amarognolo “A Lovely Bitterness.” A rich tomato-ish essence emboldened by the threat of Vesuvius.
Resembling the actor Harvey Keitel, Pasquale did his own thing for many years with his father’s blessing who told him to go out into the world and “do something that doesn’t feel like work”. But eventually somewhat to his surprise he came back to Campania and the very thing that was so unlike work turned out to be farming. Once back on the farm he tried apricot farming. This worked until the early 2000s when he realized that apricots were a commodity that could be made anywhere in the world. What was unique to the area was the piennolo tomato.
