Saffron
The organic saffron we grow by hand
A purple flower that opens at dawn and three red threads: the gold of the Piacenza hills.
Grown and harvested in our organic fields, it reaches the kitchen fresh and in season each autumn.
Crocus sativus L.
We pick it flower by flower at dawn
Our organic saffron grows in the fields of Carmiano di Vigolzone. Each autumn the Crocus sativus blooms for only a few weeks: each bulb opens three or four flowers a day, and every morning they are picked by hand, one by one, before the sun opens them fully. Then, again by hand, the three red threads are separated from each flower.
No chemicals and no rush, only the patient work it takes to make a good saffron. Each thread is as thin as a hair, and a single gram needs 150 to 200 flowers. That is why it is called red gold.
How it is made
One flower at a time
Organic saffronGrown and harvested to the European organic standards.
The harvest
The flowers are picked still closed, in the early hours of the morning, while the autumn bloom lasts.
Thread by thread
From each flower the three red threads are separated by hand: the longest and most delicate step.
The aroma
A slow drying at a low temperature, between 50 and 60 degrees, concentrates colour and aroma without making it bitter.
In pictures
From the field to the plate
The meadow in bloom at dawn, the picking thread by thread and the dishes that end up on the table.
In the kitchen and to take home
You find it in our dishes and you can take it home
Our saffron scents the risottos and signature dishes of the restaurant, and it can be bought at the farm in threads, to use in your own kitchen. Availability and formats change with the harvest: ask us what we have right now.
Who grows it
Luca and Shery tend it flower after flower
Behind every thread there are our hands. Luca and Shery follow the saffron at every step: from planting the bulbs to the dawn harvest, through the separating and the drying. It is patient work that we do ourselves, every autumn, here in Carmiano di Vigolzone.
Our story
The red gold of Vigolzone