The Valtellina and Lake Como Food and Drink

By Julia Kolbert

Have you heard of the Valtellina and the Valchiavenna? If not, you are in the company of most people who have visited Italy – even those who know and love Lake Como, one of the great beauty spots of the world. Yet the northern finger of the lake touches the Valtellina valley, where the pre-Alps meet the Alps. Here, in celebration of their symbiotic relationship, the mighty river of the Valtellina, the Adda, roars into the lake.

One enters, as through a door in a child’s story book, another world, an unspoilt, majestic valley, known for centuries as a cornucopia of goodness, full of historic towns and gastronomic specialities unique to the area. Its 2,500 kilometres of dry-stone walls make up the largest terraced area of viticulture in all Italy, known as ‘heroic viticulture’ for its dependence on human labour. However, its superb DOCG wines largely remain a secret to the rest of the world.

This book is a lovingly researched, lyrical evocation of one of the most stunning areas of the world and its food and drink. It presents its culinary delights in the context of their history, territory, and local customs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781398445451

Julia Kolbert

Julia Kolbert graduated in Classics (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge) and taught Classics for 11 years. It was the letters of Pliny the Younger which first brought her to Lake Como, where she has lived for 15 years, working as a tourist guide. Her main loves are language, literature and history, as well as cooking and cricket. One qualification which she can no longer enjoy practising is that of an MCC Qualified Scorer.

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About the Author

Julia Kolbert graduated in Classics (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge) and taught Classics for 11 years. It was the letters of Pliny the Younger which first brought her to Lake Como, where she has lived for 15 years, working as a tourist guide. Her main loves are language, literature and history, as well as cooking and cricket. One qualification which she can no longer enjoy practising is that of an MCC Qualified Scorer.

Dedication

For my parents, for all their love, with all my love.

Copyright Information ©

Julia Kolbert 2024

The right of Julia Kolbert to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035870516 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035870400 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781398445451 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Acknowledgement

I take this opportunity to express my huge thanks to the team at Austin Macauley for their encouragement, constant support and attention to detail.

Also, I warmly thank the following individuals and organizations for their kind help and permission to reproduce their photography.

Foto Lanfranconi, Menaggio

Valtellina Turismo, 2023

Consorzio Turistico Porte di Valtellina

Casa Vinicola Pietro Nera

Consorzio Turistico Media Valtellina

Ivan Previsdomini

Photo Roby Trab

Associazione Promozione Turistica Bormio Marketing

Foto Consorzio Turistico Valchiavenna

Attilio Sampietro, Menaggio

Introduction

Italy’s cuisine boasts of countless local specialities which are hallmarks of tiny areas. This fact has its origins in her famous ‘campanilismo’—the championing of one’s own bell tower and the consequent rivalry between towns and villages. For this reason, you will not find Bergamo’s delicious ravioli, called ‘casoncelli’ on the menus around Lake Como. In the spirit of mutually exclusive pride, the mountain pasta of the Valtellina, ‘pizzoccheri’, is not normally served in Bergamo’s restaurants. Yet both are provinces of Lombardy. Acting as a natural aider and a better to this parochial pride, Italy’s true wealth is tied to relatively small tracts of land, such as the great Val Valtellina, directly to the north of Lake Como, a valley little known to foreign tourists.

The wider backdrop against this intense regionality of cuisine is Italy’s complicated history, characterised by independent and often violently hostile neighbouring city-states and duchies. For example, for many years, Bergamo was on a war footing with the Duchy of Milan when ceded to the Republic of Venice in 1428. Most of what is now the Region of Lombardy was under foreign rule for roughly three hundred years—to put things extremely simply. Italy is young, politically speaking, only being unified in 1861. Add Italy’s geography to the equation and the regional differences were, until modern times, further intensified, when travelling over mountain ranges was neither desirable nor necessary—least of all out of idle culinary curiosity.

That said, a few salient features bind together all Italian cooking. Its ingredients are local, fresh and therefore seasonal. Quality is not to be compromised. In the shops—and even the supermarkets—around Lake Como, as in most areas of Italy, the fruit, vegetable and delicatessen sections abound with produce predominantly from the area. The Italians, like most southern Europeans, live closely attuned to nature and visitors from the UK find that life here, in this respect, is like stepping back in time. Those who wish to immerse themselves in the spirit and character of a place find this a welcome discovery. Sampling localised traditions of eating represents a kick against globalism and a rejoicing in the otherness of a place. Even Italy’s renowned homemade ice creams are seasonal, so you may enjoy rose ice cream in May, fruits of the forest in the mid to late summer and fig as autumn approaches.

It is no coincidence that the international Cittaslow (Slow City) movement was founded in 1999 in Italy. Its aims are to enhance the quality of life in towns by encouraging high quality of local food and drink, convivial activity and a general slowing down of the pace of life. There are currently 88 members in Italy, of which three feature in this book.

A bye result of this concentration upon local rituals and regional rivalry is a discernible lack of interest in other countries’ cuisines. Restaurants dedicated to the cuisine of the rest of the world are not common in Italy, even in the major cities, excepting a few quarters. Conversely, in Great Britain, even local specialities such as Cornish pasties, Lancashire Hotpot, Irish Stew, Welsh Rarebit, Yorkshire pudding, and its many cheeses are found throughout the land; roast beef and fish and chips its length and breadth. Haggis is perhaps an exception in remaining almost firmly north of the border, except on Burns Night. International cuisine positively abounds.

This book is therefore not only a celebration of the cuisine unique to Lake Como and its neighbouring provinces in Lombardy but of a way of life, whose wholesome values are becoming better appreciated in the present age. My aim is to present the culinary delights of one of the most stunning places in the world in the context of its history, territory and local customs.

©Valtellina Turismo 2023

Chapter One

The Valtellina Valley

Whoever has never been to the Valtellina, go.

Mario Soldati, writer and film director, Vino al Vino, A. Mondadori, 1969

Let us go then, you and I, to one of the most extraordinary valleys in Italy, set out between two majestic chains of Alps directly to the north of Lake Como. The dramatic landscape contains thick woods, rich meadows, natural springs, torrents, waterfalls and crystal Alpine lakes, historic towns, Renaissance palaces and museums. It boasts of the highest Tibetan bridge in Europe, a vast national park, Italy’s highest mountain pass negotiable by car and the second highest in the Alps, one of the country’s oldest trees, its largest summer ski area, Europe’s longest illuminated ski piste and many other little-known claims to fame.

However, for centuries, it has been most famous for its wealth of food and drink. An anonymous twelfth century poem extols the Valtellina as ‘beautiful, sunny, distinguished by the virtues of the people, rich in vineyards, gardens, dairies and nuts of many kinds.’ Matteo Bandello, an ex-monk and prolific novelist of the sixteenth century, who was acquainted with Machiavelli and Leonardo da Vinci, spent time in the Valtellina and commented on the ‘delicious food and extremely fine wines, in a courtly setting, where both the surroundings and the men appear idyllic, refined and graceful.’ It was Bandello’s plays which were adapted by Shakespeare for Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet. In the next century, Gioacchino Alberti wrote, ‘This land has an abundance of corn, chestnuts and exquisite wines, the quality of which both ancient and modern historians speak of.’ Today, its wines, cheeses, meats, fruit and many other specialities fill the shops of the area in a glorious explosion of the ‘zero kilometre’ and ‘slow food’ ideals.

The Romans believed that there were gods of doorways and borders, as in Janus, the January portal of the year (from the Latin ‘ianua,’ door), whose two faces looked backwards and forwards. Lofty Monte Legnone, Lake Como’s only Alp, is a natural border between the lake province of Como and the mountain province of Sondrio, whose city of the same name is the provincial capital of the Valtellina. 2,600 metres high, Legnone is a classic, pyramid shaped Alp, visible for many a god’s pace to the south and the north. It mesmerises at all times of the year. It is always the first mountain on the lake to adopt a snowy mantle, and ice marks its deepest veins even in the summer months. It marks the beginning of the Orobie chain of Alps and towers over Colico, the northernmost town of Como. A benign if awesome border god, Legnone is the gateway between the geographical glories of two very different Lombard provinces.

The Roman way of thinking strikes one upon first entering the Valtellina from Lake Como. For one beholds a completely different world, like stepping through a magic door in a children’s story book. You find yourself in a plain between two chains of Alps. The southern mountains are the Orobie Alps and the even higher, northern Alps are the Rhetican Alps, between 3,000-4,000 metres high, a giant border wall between Italy and Switzerland. The farmhouses stand stoutly with slate roofs, the material of the valley. Gone in an instant are the slender terracotta-roofed houses of the lake. Two generic activities run like threads through this valley: slate quarrying and the treatment of wood. The road runs straight as a die for it has no other option.

The Valtellina is the only east-west orientated valley in the eastern half of the Alps. Carved by the same glaciers that created Lake Como during the last Ice Age with unsurpassable artistry, the 120 kilometres of the valley (the longest in the Alps) form the riverbed of the great River Adda, its omnipresent protagonist. The river, 194 miles long, starts its life high in the Italian Alps between Bormio and Livigno, close to the Swiss border. It charges into Lake Como at Colico, beneath the gaze of Monte Legnone and exits the lake at its south-east end at Lecco, to continue on to the River Po and the Adriatic Sea.

The Orobie Alps form the dark side of the valley. Its northern slopes facing the valley are generally less inhabited and frosts linger long in winter. These slopes and those of the sunny Rhetican Alps opposite exchange mutually stunning views at all times of the year. The flat valley bottom accommodates manufacturing businesses, light industry, farms and the growing of crops. The first 70 kilometres of road to the crossroads town of Tirano, rising only imperceptibly, is called the ‘Strada dei Sapori,’ a phrase which conveys everything but is difficult to translate. The carefully developed ‘Wine and Flavour Trail’ of the Valtellina covers 200 kilometres and traverses no fewer than 78 municipalities.

The Lower Valtellina: A Land of Milk and Honey

Lombardy, the richest area of Italy, has traditionally produced for Italy a third of