Culture
and the quality of life intertwine in San Miniato: both in the urban context of
the city centre and the uncontaminated rural hinterland.
A meeting point for the city and the countryside is the material culture
of food that, in San Miniato, has deep roots in their ancient agricultural
economy. San Miniato is a
truffle-rich area that is one of the most ample and fruitful in Europe.
The White Truffle grown in the San Miniato Hills is the most valuable
type known.
If
the San Miniato Truffle is unique, there are numerous other agricultural
products that create a matchless constellation of taste and flavours.
Their story is intertwined with that of the people of San Miniato, who,
being of a jealous nature, have always preferred to cultivate their products for
their own use more than selling them to others.
The wines and olive oils are the fruit of a territory that is very suited
for it, especially the production of vinsanto (sweet raisin wine), made from the
white grapes of San Colombano.
The
artichoke from San Miniato, one of the most abundant and flavourful of the
varieties was well-known even in Medicean times. The Kentucky variety of tobacco
has been imported for two centuries from North America and from it the “Sigaro
Toscano” or Tuscan Cigar is produced. The
quasi Romanesque shape of the tobacco drying structures, similar to those found
in Cuba where the tobacco is dried, punctuates the San Miniato landscape and
maintains its artesian traditions.
The
culture of food and its flavours is also created by the intelligence and
capability of the artisans who are able to recreate ancient and new flavours.
Modernity has not dimmed this centuries-old knowledge, but has instead
revived it. For some time the treatment and preparation of pork and
blood
products has once again come to life in the Longobard and medieval centre of San
Miniato. The art of baking and Mediterranean treatment of flour also makes their
pastries and baked goods excellent.
San
Miniato is a City of Flavours that still today come from the refectories of its
ancient convents, its medieval tertiaries and over thirty manorial farms that
were already listed in a feudal deed dating back to the year 938 A.D.
Its
territory is an open jewel-case. In
the streets of the historical town centre and in the many itineraries of its
extensive countryside that lead to age-old parishes and villages, is the ancient
culture of a simple and reserved hospitality that has known how to preserve
those flavours.