Marroni or chestnut?
Eatable chestnut is not just marroni.
The differences are however rather from commercial than botanical kind and are from country to country differently defined.
French marroni contain at most 12 % interior skin.
In Switzerland other criteria apply. Marroni are fruits, which are at most in three in the bristly coverings. They are ellipse shaped and the outer skin is bright with darker ribs pulled through. The interior skin is not ingrown and can easily be removed. The flesh is tight and tastes pleasantly sweet.
With these quality criteria marroni obtain clearly higher market prices. The interior skin of freshly harvested marroni does sometimes not separate well. If marroni rest for seven to ten days, the shell dries and the interior skin separates with the outer shell.
Marroni and their shade sides
You buy 200 gram of marroni at a marroni stand and start to eat them. In the bag you find two spotted ones, one with a worm inside and one that is mouldy under the shell.
What are you thinking?
You must be aware that this is not the marroni salesman’s fault. Chestnuts are a natural product and therefore not immune to infestation. We pay attention to sell to our customers only 100% unadulterated products. For this reason we do not use preservatives and also no taste amplifiers. Thus afflicted chestnuts actually serve as a warranty for pure natural marroni. It would only be rather suspicious if you buy three of four bags of marroni and all are spotless.
Sometimes the shell cannot be removed well. There are two applicable reasons: On one hand it can be because the appropriate sort of marroni completely fresh, in particular at the beginning of the season. On the other hand it can be because a wrong sort was supplied to the marroni salesman. You were surely already surprised at the relatively high price (at present approx. 3.-/100g) for “hot marroni”. You must know that chestnuts and marroni which we offer are imported from Italy. The Italian farmer is kept busy the whole year maintaining the trees, keeping the ground clean and bringing in the harvest. Despite the development of modern machines in the last years, the majority of the harvest however still takes place by hand, since machines cannot be used in the often steep and imponderable areas. This production costs accordingly money. Farmers deliver their harvest to collecting points. Our suppliers purchase either directly from a farmer or obtain the desired quantity at a collecting point. The bought quantity is hoped to be resold. Turnover calculations take place already in September, what naturally brings a certain risk with itself. An average of 200 to 300 kilo chestnuts has to be bought for a final product of 100 kilo. Sometimes it is too much and sometimes too little. But the risk is carried by our suppliers. At the supplier’s warehouse, the marroni are getting cleaned, calibrated roughly, and left in the cold water for a while. Afterwards or sometimes o before the cold bath, the fruits are bathed in 50 degrees hot water during approximately 40 minutes. This is to destroy worms. After this procedure the mass is checked through periodically by hand and sorted according to sizes. This procedure must be accomplished several times, since the stored marroni lose humidity and extent. Until the end of the season (mid March) this procedure repeats itself up to three times.
At our warehouse the marroni are checked through optically again and then packed into 30 kg bags. We have an annual trash of up to 30 tons marroni.
Chestnuts are cut on order and supplied on the next day to our customers. These again roast the sweet fruits, check them again and sell the “hot marroni” to the fastidious clientele.
As you can see this process, from the harvested chestnut to the hot marroni in the bag, is extremely complex and costly. Marroni Import Gysi & Strazzini AG stands in for fair prices for everyone. Straightly also for the farmer, who is irreplaceable as guarantor for the solid future of our product. Additionally our prices guarantee you the high quality of our products.
