A red-violet bulb, sweet enough to eat raw or turn into ice cream and jam: three recognised ecotypes, flat-round, medium-round and elongated, depending on the harvest season. Phoenicians and later Greeks brought it to this coast, where it found an ideal microclimate — mild winters, hot summers, water-rich soils — and from there it began to travel: by the Middle Ages and the Renaissance it was already being exported by sea to Tunisia, Algeria and Greece.
The production zone follows the Calabrian Tyrrhenian coast for nearly a hundred kilometres, from the edge of Amantea, in the province of Cosenza, to Nicotera, in the province of Vibo Valentia, passing through the province of Catanzaro: twenty-three municipalities in all, with Tropea giving it its best-known name.
The Protected Geographical Indication mark arrived on 28 March 2008, under a European regulation: recognition for a product grown here for thousands of years.
