In our Hystoric Chianti, harvesting juniper berries has always been a seasonal activity.
Every year, from mid-August until the beginning of the harvest, every farming family took part in the harvest.
On every farm, the elders taught the young how to harvest juniper berries. It was a true art. No branch was to be damaged, lest the plant be weakened, and the green berries were preserved for the following year’s harvest. Today, the term eco-sustainable is used, but once it was called common sense. The whole family was busy “beating the berries” with wicker baskets and laurel sticks. This heavy and sturdy wood was best suited to deliver an effective blow, ensuring only the ripe berries fell into the basket. After the laborious threshing, the selection process began. To facilitate the cleaning of the berries in the large farmyards, special sieves and sifters were used. Juniper needles, insects, foreign bodies, oak leaves and twigs were removed to improve the quality of the product to be sold.
The green berries (immature and mistakenly picked) and the many brown berries (dry and old from the previous year) were removed by hand, one by one. This exhausting process of selecting the berries was followed by aging them in ventilated rooms to prevent mold and promote the natural development of the balsamic aroma typical of Tuscan juniper. Once the new wine was ready in the cellar, it began to be sold to the trecconi (a merchant who traveled the countryside with his cart to buy rabbit skins, eggs, beeswax, and honey). As early as the 1960s, large trucks full of berries harvested in this part of Tuscany traveled to England to infuse the soul of their flavor and aroma into alcoholic beverages like gin.
Every family here knows these stories.
But why was Chianti Juniper Berry so sought-after?
The patience in selecting and the special aging on cypress boards are some of the reasons for this quality, but there’s more! Not all junipers are the same! Juniperus communis grows wild but can produce small or large berries depending on the subspecies in which it occurs naturally.
And here lies the secret of every juniper… looking for the best plant, one that gets the most sun in spring and has favorable winds for pollination.