Where do Things come from?

Hazelnuts

Our hazelnuts come from a town called Benevello, in Piedmonte. The region is renowned for hazelnuts and Nebbiolo grapes [which make Barolo wine] and truffles. It’s a UNESO World Heritage Region, and there’s a bit of turf warfare going on, between hazelnut farms and vineyards. You can see this on the photos.

We have a producer called Saverio, who has 6 kids and took just one holiday once, and realised he doesn’t like being on holidays — he couldn’t wait to get back home. He told me he was born in Benevello. He knows he wants to live there. And he knows he’s going to die there. He takes care of the trees all year. He grows and roasts and grinds hazelnuts and we get them straight from him. The harvest is done manually, and happens once a year in September [for 4-6 weeks]. They need to be husked and dried and roasted and ground into a 100% pure, organic hazel paste. Saverio stores them whole, hand selects and grinds everything fresh and sends them to us by UPS whenever I need them, every few months. Before Covid, it would take 4 days, to get from rural Italy to rural NSW, which is mind-boggling, really.

The sweetness and texture and flavour are amazing — I haven’t found any other hazelnuts which match that profile [scientists can tell you it’s thanks to the clay soil and a seawind that comes laden with salt]. Maybe sometime in the future, we’ll make ice-cream with Australian hazelnuts, for our customers to compare, because they have a flavour profile that’s distinctive — a bit more stringent. It would be cheaper for us to buy local nuts, but that’s not the point. It’s not about profit margin. It’s about genuine flavours. And we are Italian after all.