Welcome to Castagno d’Andrea

“Pan di legno e vin di nugoli”. This proverb defined the life of the old farmer of the Tuscan mountain: sweet chestnut flour bread (“pan di legno”) and wine…from clouds (“vin di nugoli”), that is water! Poor life, therefore, if you think of the plenty of the plains in Romagna. But still a livable life, thanks to the tree that guaranteed the sweet fruit that, dried and ground, produced the flour, the food base of the winter. And even the smallest chestnuts were collected. Even a grain makes flour, old people said to children, and the chestnut, however small, is always much bigger than a grain of wheat. But the generosity of the chestnut does not stop here. Its leaves were used as cattle feed, and the waste fruit allowed the pig to fatten. Its wood, very resistant to humidity, was used to provide very solid beams for houses. Tables were made from the chestnut for the furniture or to build the internal stairs of the houses, to make work tools, even the baskets, with the young shoots or the bark strips. That’s why it is correct to speak of a “chestnut civilization”, because the relationship of dependence of man’s life on the plant was decisive. 

Of course, today the situation has changed a lot, but when in October we return to “browns” for the harvest, we realize how this culture is still interiorized in people and determine its behavior.

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