Poli Museo della Grappa Srlu

The manna... gift of the stars

• Plant: Manna Ash (Fraxinus Ornus)
• Plant part: sap
• Plant feauters: laxative, anti-catarrh, cough-releasing, purgative

• Description:

  The manna has become very much a talking point over the centuries, causing considerable confusion and giving free rein to a variety of interpretations.
  We are talking about manna, those "sugar" that flows from the stem of the manna ash after there were some incisions.

  Since the Greeks, this "resin" has been regarded as a kind of natural honey, deposited on the trees, or as Plinius described it, an azure blue dew, falling on the star tops of the trees and therefore called "sweat of heaven", "airy honey" or "saliva of the stars".
  All interpretations evidently very "biblical" that were in some way exploded by the Arabs who discovered in Sicily the practice of extraction of manna, which remained for a long time dark and mysterious.

  In reality, the manna is a sweet and air dried juice, which flows from the manna ash as a result of an insect bite (Cicada Orni); the Sicilians learned from hunger to acquire a more intensive extraction by incisions in the trunk.
  Since the manna is a sugar, it is very suitable for flavoring a Grappa.

   

The recipe

• Ingredients:

  - 1 liter of Grappa
  - some scrap of manna

• Preparation:

  Some scraps of manna will be placed in one liter of Grappa in a sunny place until it is all melted, then left to age in the cellar for about a year, that it assumes a yellowish color and a delicate and refreshing taste.