:: The aromatic herbs, the vegetable garden products, the sweet smells of woods and olive groves, of the sea and its fruits…

:: The Cinque Terre are renowned both for their characteristic landscape and for the DOC wines which are produced here.

:: The terracings cultivated with vineyards which in the month of September become livelier with men and women carrying baskets full of golden grapes through the strips offer a dry white wine and a passito one, the Sciachetrà, that is rare and precious.

:: Only selected grapes, after withering in aired attics sheltered from dampness and sunlight, will be ready to produce this renowned sweet wine.

:: The cooking of these places hands on the old recipes and the aromatic herbs which spring up spontaneously enhance its primary tastes; it is possible to taste rice and vegetable pies with courgettes, chards, borage and wild herbs.

:: But the sea is undoubtedly the main protagonist at table, with a rich choice of fresh fish.
In summer there are plenty of delicious Monterosso anchovies which are fished by means of a "lampara".

::If the multicoloured selection of agroindustrial products were a play the leading figure would certainly be basil.

Nowadays this precious little plant, the undisputed protagonist and the philosophers' stone of the Ligurian taste, is not only as sweet-smelling and tasty as it has always been, but it is also more natural and sure.

Indeed already in 1999 Liguria anticipated the application of the rules established by the European Union in order to regulate the use of additives in farming.

This is a choice which guarantees the very high natural quality of the basil cultivated in Liguria.

There is a quality trademark that makes the Ligurian basil (and its firstborn child, the DOP pesto, with the denomination of protected origin) a real "green gold".