Iblea honey brandy, Spiritu re' fascitrari, Spiritu i meli, Spiritu a cira
Description

Iblea honey brandy, Spiritu re' fascitrari, Spiritu i meli, Spiritu a cira

Product included in the national list of traditional agri-food products (PAT)

PAT type: Soft drinks, spirits and liqueurs

 

Technical data sheet of the traditional agri-food product (PAT)

Area of ​​production: Hyblean plateau in south-eastern Sicily

Brief description of the product: Alcoholic drink obtained by distillation of honey or from the waxing honey of combs or hives, suitably fermented in mead.

Description of the processing, conservation and maturing methods:It mainly uses the

thyme or eucalyptus honey, orange blossom, carob, wildflower honey produced in the Iblei Mountains.

The honey must be worked until it becomes a "gileppo of honey"; The Iblea honey distillate is distilled in a batch copper alembic in a steam bain-marie and is obtained as a brandy with an alcohol content of less than 80% vol. The brandy should be consumed below 45% vol. The final product can be diluted with distilled water, to an alcohol content ranging from 38% Vol. To 42% Vol. Specific materials and equipment used for preparation and conditioning: Steam powered discontinuous copper alembic.

Description of the processing, storage and maturing rooms: Beekeepers 'houses or beekeepers' businesses

Elements proving that the methodologies have been practiced in a homogeneous way and according to traditional rules for a period of not less than 25 years: The production of the re 'fascitrari spirit is located in a few municipalities in the Val di Noto and in particular in Sortino, a small town in the hilly hinterland of Syracuse (L. Ajovalasit and P. Columba -Un. Of Palermo: "Typical products to discover: Spiritu re 'Fascitrari ”- Extr. From Agro-Food Economics, Year III, n. 1, 1998). In these places the beekeepers are called“ fascitrari ”because they used the hives built with ferula shrubs, the“ fascetri ”. This method, as innovative as it is ancient, even allowed the collection of honey without the need to disperse the families of bees that animated the "fascetri".

Sebastiano Burgaretta in the book "Bees and honey of Sicily" - Ed. E. Valle del Belice Museum, 1982, explains that this practice has been handed down in the Hyblaean for some centuries, but starting from the second postwar period of the twentieth century the last outposts of semi hives -rationals resist only in Sortino, the town close to Pantalica (the "stone beehive" necropolis recognized by UNESCO in the WHL), capital of the kingdom of Hyblon where, according to the stories of Maurolico (XVI century), he settled Xuto (hence Xutinum, Sciortino, Sortino) brother of Aeolus, who grateful for the hospitality, gave the recipe for Ambrosia to the beekeepers.

Source Pat Cards: Sicily Region 

Card insertion: Ignazio Caloggero

Information contributions: Web, Region of Sicily

Photo: web

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