Salento Lecce without tobacco Vittorio Bodini

Salento Lecce without tobacco Vittorio Bodini


search for Bruno Antonio *



Falls apart at this time on the lands of the South

sunset from a slaughtered beast.

The air is full of blood,

and olive trees, and leaves of tobacco

and still does not light a candle.



"Here I do not want to die to live / touches me, my country, / so unwelcome from having to love; / floor where the light appears to slow / raw meat / and loquat leaves and winter is among us. / / Lazy / as a crescent in the May sun, / the cup of coffee, the lost words, / I live now in the things that my eyes look: / olive and became a slow tire wagon / hedge of prickly pear, bitter earth / where growing tobacco. / But you, mortal and cloudy, so my / one way / say is not true, that's not all. / / Sad envy of life, across this plain / there is a branch on which you want posarti.



"A town called Cocumola / is / how to get your hands dirty with flour / green door and a lemon-colored. / Men are silent shirts with a knot in her handkerchief / to remember the heart. / Tobacco is a secare, / and life Cocumola between the utensils / where women feathery taste the broth. "



In February 1898, Cosimo De Giorgi wrote that the climate of Salento in Lecce is similar to that of Eastern countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. During the winter alternating hot winds and moist south wind south-west with those of the northern quadrant. The mild climate of Salento Lecce has encouraged the cultivation of tobacco. The planting of tobacco seedlings was practiced during the month of December. The other condition for the cultivation of tobacco is to have a summer without rain and Salento Lecce rains were preceded by a thunderstorm and then were exceptional phenomena.



The fashion of snuff



The fashion of snuff was introduced by Catherine de Medici, who was supplied by its ambassador Nicot. The same Caterina I care 'of his son Francesco ulcers with an ointment prepared in a mortar pounding the leaves and letting them cook in pork fat. This is why the tobacco was for a time other names like "the Ambassador grass", "grass Medici", "caterinaria", etc..





The cultivation of tobacco and snuff "Sun of Spain" in Salento Lecce



In Salento Lecce were grown for snuff tobacco that required daily irrigation and is characterized by having leaves with a median spine large, fibrous and more than a meter long.

Snuff was a typical crop of Salento in Lecce. In 1771 by edict of Pope Clement XIV, the Congregation of the Cistercian monks, in order to reclaim the wetlands surrounding their monastery, they began to give the land to the peasants in the census and those affected by that conviction took refuge in a convent for the ' impunity, with the revenues the monks began the cultivation of different plants and gave impetus to the cultivation of tobacco.

In manufacturing, the monks began the production, first for their own consumption and then for commercial purposes, the famous powder "Sun of Spain".

In Lecce, with the privilege given to Madrid December 17, 1682 we appointed a "belief of Fondaco of Lecce.



Varieties of Snuff grown in the Salento Lecce



In Lecce, which included the provinces of Brindisi and Taranto, Lecce Kotor cultivated varieties, imported by the Venetians, the stranger Kotor, from Alsace, the richest country in Kotor and Brazil Lecce, imported from Spain or from Naples to work navigators.

The cultivation of these varieties gave rise to the first private manufacturing industries for the production of dust and snuff. The numerous monasteries in the province of Lecce contributed to the spread of dust, especially the "Leccese from box" produced by the Capuchin friars.



The first Factory snuff del Salento Lecce



In 1752, by royal edict of Charles III of Bourbon, was implanted in Lecce, a major manufacture of snuff in a former convent of the Dominicans who, using 20 flour mills 'grinders' moved by hand, producing powder luxury.

The request of Kotor Lecce and Brazil, used in powder processing, in the province favored the spread of tobacco cultivation.



The Commission of Inquiry on the 1881 tobacco



In 1881 a Commission of Inquiry into the tobacco grown in the Levantine Terra d'Otranto, that "... if the monopoly was taken by the State and equally divided the producers and the public treasury the benefits now flowing back to the shareholders of SAB .

At that time began to spread in Leccese tobacco smuggling, helped in part by inadequate price paid for the best quality of tobacco, and the small number of outlets that sometimes makes it difficult to present the supply of tobacco.





The first crop of tobacco in eastern Salento Lecce



The first cultivation of oriental tobaccos, after the trial plots planted in 1885 in Cori (Rome) and Cava dei Tirreni (Salerno), were carried out between 1890 and 1898 in Puglia, Sicily and Sardinia (Vizzini, Alessio, Poggiardo, Lecce, Jesi, Sassari, Palermo Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto).

The cultivations were performed under the direction of Prof. Orazio Comes, a distinguished botanist, professor of botany and plant pathology at the Agricultural College at Portici, famous author of studies on the cultivation of tobacco and phylogeny.



The introduction of tobacco in eastern Salento Lecce



As already written in the Salento Lecce in 1890 it introduced the oriental varieties Xanthi Yaka and Herzegovina, Macedonia and from dall'Erzegovina, with positive results. The oriental tobacco leaves must be small and the prevalence of fibrous tissue on that phone. And then there is no difference between the varieties of tobacco grown for Kotor and Brazil instinct which must be watered to speed up the vegetation, the eastern one instead needs to slow down and delay the vegetation to get the leaves small, flexible, almost transparent and very aromatic after drying.

The other factor behind the success of tobacco in eastern Salento Lecce was the land in our area is in most cases limestone. The limestone soil of little depth but is more suited to the cultivation of the oriental tobacco from the soil rich in humus.





Tobacco pipe Salento



Kentucky tobacco were obtained by a kind used for fine pipe, as the Salento (obtained from the intersection with the Kotor). In 1922 he began the cultivation experimental Lucugnano (Lecce)



Not to forget



The encyclopedias that students consult with us before the advent of the network, the Internet under the Province of Lecce read the main crops were the olive, vine and tobacco. Tobacco has traveled all the memories, and this was the harvesting of tobacco it was up to women. They got up early in the morning to go to collect the green leaves, all the same size.

The leaves are perfectly arranged over one another, were gently placed in boxes, transported by men with wagons on a farm. Cool, the arcades, women, sitting in a circle, tucking the leaves one by one in long flat needles, "acuceddi", then go on making wire rope forming "them Kurds."

We put on special racks to dry wood (taraletti), to be covered at night and take in the sun all day, every night, every day, with eyes on the sky every now and then, when the clouds appeared.

Beware if the tobacco is wet! The leaves, attached to each other as they were, they would moldy!

It was our life and since there is no longer here it is now written, as did Vittorio Bodini ... not to forget ....



* Agronomist (expert in urban and regional diagnostic entitled International University Master's Degree in Diagnostic IMD Urban and Regional Urban and Territorial Diagnostics).



Bibliography



Giampietro Diana, The history of tobacco in Italy. I. Introduction and spread of tobacco since the 16th century to 1860

Cosimo De Giorgi, The cultivation of tobacco in eastern Apulia