In Campania, Fall Begins with the Chestnut Harvest

Chestnuts dropping to the ground signal the start of fall in southern Italy. Since medieval times, chestnuts have been a staple food in rural, mountainous Campanian communities, and remained a significant part of the diet well into the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Today, the region cultivates chestnut groves covering around 15,000 hectares, supporting countless farms. Several varieties hold IGP status—an Indicazione Geografica Protetta, an EU certification that identifies products whose quality, reputation, or other characteristics belong to a specific geographic area.

Every autumn, the chestnut harvest marks a regional rhythm. From September through November, farmers collect chestnuts by hand in the mountain zones of Avellino, Salerno, and Benevento. So it's the perfect time to bring them onto Flora's menu in the Ravioli Castagne e Ceci.

The Campanian chestnuts go into ravioli along with ricotta, parmigiano reggiano, cicerale chickpea purée, sun-dried peperoni cruschi from a relative's farm, and drops of traditional vino cotto from Lucania. It's a dish that carries many fall traditions from Cilento, from the chestnut harvest to the harvest of grapes for wine. Emiliano and Rossella explain.

What role did chestnut season play in your family life?

We grew up in a place where the beauty of the sea gives way, almost suddenly, to hills covered with olive trees and, just above them, wild mountains cloaked in chestnut forests. There, autumn has a smell—the smell of wood smoke and damp leaves—and a rhythm, marked by the transumanza, when the herds would move down from the mountains as the air turned cold. 

Chestnut season was part of that rhythm, a small but deeply felt celebration of the land.

Someone in the family, or a close friend, always owned a chestnut grove. From September on, even the elementary schools would organize chestnut-picking days—baskets full of spiny burrs, scratched hands, and laughter echoing in the woods. 

Later, at home, the vrulera, a special pan with holes, roasted the chestnuts over the fire. If you forgot to cut a slit in the shell, they'd explode in the flames—a little chaos and a lot of joy. Chestnuts and wine after lunch — that was heaven on earth.

What are your strongest memories from fall in Campania?

Without a doubt, la vendemmia (the grape harvest) is the most important and meaningful memory of autumn in our family. It has always been more than a moment of agricultural work. It represents a collective practice that connects generations and defines the social rhythm of rural life in Campania. 

It passes down from generation to generation—my grandfather, then my father. Now my sister carries it on. Even though I now live far away, following the harvest from a distance still feels like participating in something that belongs deeply to us.

The harvest is a community event: family, friends, and neighbors come together early in the morning to pick the grapes, often working side by side for hours. It's a system that used to rely not only on family labor but on mutual help, one day in our vineyard, another in someone else's. Everyone participated: the elderly, who coordinated and gave instructions; the young, who carried the baskets; and the children, who learned by watching. In this sense, la vendemmia is also an educational and social occasion, a way to transmit values like cooperation, patience, and respect for the natural cycle of the land.

It also has a symbolic value. The act of harvesting grapes is the conclusion of an entire year's work, but also the beginning of something new: the transformation of grapes into wine, of effort into reward. It's a concrete example of how traditional rural life has always balanced work and celebration, fatigue and sharing. Since my father passed away, this moment has become even more charged with meaning. The work in the fields has turned into a direct way of maintaining a connection with him, with our family's history, and with the land that shaped us. It's not nostalgia—it's continuity.

La Vendemmia deserves capital letters, like a proper noun, maybe even celebrated more deeply than Christmas, without being blasphemous!

Which dishes were most tied to chestnut season?

In our home, autumn meant pasta e ceci, lagane e ceci, and those hearty soups of chickpeas slowly cooked in a pignatella beside the fire—the same fire that warmed you while you cracked open roasted chestnuts and drank red wine.

What made you want to bring them onto Flora's menu?

This dish we created at Flora over the past weeks is, in many ways, different from what we usually do. It's not based on a single traditional recipe handed down through generations, but rather on a combination of flavors, products, and atmospheres that belong to the cultural and emotional heritage of our land, especially in autumn.

We started with the idea of ravioli, because in Southern Italy, they're a symbol of Sunday: a typical lunch that moms make. Around that, we wanted to build something that could speak of our territory at this specific time of year. So we brought together ingredients that are all tied to the same geography and season: chestnuts, which mark the start of autumn; the ceci di Cicerale, a Slow Food variety from Cilento, small and rich in flavor; and vino cotto, the cooked must prepared right after the grape harvest—a sort of sweet, dense syrup used commonly in the countryside; basically, the opposite of balsamic vinegar, which comes instead from the finished wine.

To complete the dish, we added the peperoni cruschi, the dried sweet peppers typical of the Vallo di Diano and Lucania—a product with a powerful local identity, still made today in small farms. Our cousin actually sends the ones we use at Flora from his organic farm in Lucania, where he dries them naturally under the sun.

What connects all these ingredients is not only their flavor, but the way they reflect the daily life and the seasonal rhythm of Southern Italy. It's a new recipe, yes—but built entirely on old roots.