One glass. A full day of vitamin C.
Tarocco carries the highest vitamin C of any orange cultivar. A 200 ml pressing covers the recommended daily intake.
Rubra Estate — Eastern slopes of Etna · 37.6° N 15.0° E
Grown where cold volcanic nights meet the Sicilian sun. A blood orange so deeply pigmented it stains the light — allocated in limited crates to restaurants and gourmet distributors.
On the eastern slopes of Mount Etna, Europe's highest active volcano, the citrus groves live between two climates.
By day the Sicilian sun drives the air well past twenty degrees. By night, cold currents pour down from the summit and the temperature falls close to freezing.
That thermal shock is a signal. To protect itself, the fruit synthesises anthocyanins, the same pigments that colour blueberries and black grapes. Nowhere else on Earth does an orange answer with such intensity.
The flesh darkens from amber to deep ruby as winter deepens, sweet with a wine-like depth, on soil Etna has been enriching with mineral ash for half a million years.
Cold air slides down from the 3,300 m summit and pools in the groves before dawn.
Twelve hours later the same terraces bake in the most intense light in Europe.
The daily shock triggers the pigment that turns amber flesh into deep ruby.
02 — Specifications
Every number below is a consequence of where the tree stands: altitude, ash, and a twenty-degree swing between night and noon.
Tarocco carries the highest vitamin C of any orange cultivar. A 200 ml pressing covers the recommended daily intake.
Half a million years of ash and lapilli: porous, mineral, free-draining. Roots go deep and the fruit tastes of it.
Nothing leaves the grove as waste. Every by-product returns to the soil or to the kitchen.
Terraced groves on the eastern flank.
03 — Sensory
Six frames from the grove to the glass. Move through them slowly.