Cappero di Pantelleria

Appearance & taste

The capers are spherical or almost spherical, rarely elongated or conical, and green to mustard green. Their diameter is between 4 and 15 mm, their moisture content between 50 and 70 %. In the pack, the sea salt may make up at most 25 % of the weight of the capers.

The smell is strong and aromatic, without musty or foreign notes. The taste is aromatic and salty, as is typical, according to the specification, of the Pantelleria capers preserved in sea salt.

Production

The caper plantations consist of plants of the species Capparis spinosa, variety inermis, cultivar Nocellara. All steps from sowing through harvest to salting take place exclusively on Pantelleria and according to the local method. Harvesting is done by hand and staggered over time: buds that are not yet ripe enough stay on the plant. Salting is done dry and exclusively with sea salt.

The label shows “Cappero di Pantelleria” and “Indicazione geografica protetta” in lettering of the same size and colour, together with the address of the processing plant on Pantelleria.

Origin & history

Pantelleria is of volcanic origin and extremely dry because of very low rainfall, according to the specification an ideal environment for capers. Thanks to the size of the growing area, the special care and its own processing and marketing structures, the caper has become a specialised crop and an important source of income on the island.

The first more detailed information was given by P. Calcara in 1855 in a treatise on the geography and agriculture of the island: at that time the caper grew wild on the south coast and on the cliffs, and poor people gathered the buds in July and August before flowering and sold them to traders, who sorted them by size and preserved them in brine or vinegar. The Brockhaus encyclopaedia of 1894 mentions the caper under the entry “Pantelleria”, and Pietro Brignone Boccanera wrote in 1908 that capers had been grown on the island since the second half of the 18th century. For a long time caper growing lagged behind viticulture, above all the growing of Zibibbo grapes. From the early 1960s the growing area and production increased; in 1983 production was around 12,000 quintals.