Turri - Sagra dello Zafferano di Sardegna DOP

The event was born as the Saffron Festival to allow local producers to raise awareness and promote the precious product. Over time it evolves, thanks to the will of three small municipalities (Turri, San Gavino Monreale and Villanovafranca), the largest producers of saffron in Sardinia and among the first in the entire peninsula, becoming Sagra dello Zafferano di Sardegna DOP.

During the flowering period, around the first fifteen days of November, the town turns purple through a series of events. Every organoleptic property is highlighted with the preparation of themed dishes, a conference, multi-sensory workshops and activities for adults and children, and the market fair of local agri-food and artisanal products. During the event the historic municipal center opens to visitors who can walk through the historic center entering and visiting the private pratzas which welcome visitors for the occasion.

Sardinia is the main region in Italy for the cultivation and production of saffron.

The historical and productive nucleus is concentrated in the municipalities of Turri, San Gavino Monreale, and Villanovafranca.
The morphological and pedoclimatic characteristics of these areas of Sardinia, combined with traditional cultivation and processing techniques handed down from father to son, allow us to obtain a product with unique and unmistakable organoleptic and gustatory peculiarities.

The saffron produced in Sardinia has an average content of crocin (the element to which the coloring power of saffron is linked), picrocrocin (the element to which the euptetic effects and flavor corrective are attributable) and safranal (the element to which the flavoring properties are associated) considerably higher than the norm. These characteristics allowed the saffron produced in the territories of San Gavino, Turri and Villanovafranca to acquire the Protected Designation of Origin Zafferano di Sardegna in 2007.

The origin of saffron is very ancient and is lost in the mists of time. It is believed that even before the advent of cereal cultivation, dating back to prehistory, the cultivation of Crocus sativus was already known in the Mediterranean area. The first reference to saffron in Sardinia is found in the Latin inscription dedicated by Cassius Philip to the memory of his deceased wife in the 1st century AD, and engraved in the Grotta della Vipera in Cagliari "From your ashes, O Pontilla, violets and lilies sprout, and may you, thus reliving in the leaves of the roses, of the scented saffron, of the amaranth that does not die".

The cultivation of saffron in Sardinia is considered certain between the 6th and 9th centuries, due to the widespread consumption of it by Basilian monks for liturgical reasons and as a textile dye. It was customary to cultivate vegetable gardens near monasteries or near noble houses and its use also extended to uses such as aromatic and medicinal ones. The first document attesting to its commercialization is the "Breve Portus Kallaretani", the regulation of the port of Cagliari from 1318 which contains rules for the export of stigmas. Starting from 1535, in the registers of the notary Melchiorre De Silva there are deeds of sale of gardens cultivated with "Croci de saffra", receipts for the purchase of stigmas and goods paid for using saffron as currency. In the work of the historian Francesco Fara "Sardiniae Chorographiam" from 1580 it is stated that at the time excellent saffron was abundant in Sardinia.

The historiography on the use and traditions of saffron in Sardinia leads us to point out that only in this region does the lexicon on saffron used by generations and families have its own linguistic specificity: tzafaranu (saffron), crini (the leaves of saffron, enas (the pistils), grofu (the day of maximum flower production), cuguddau (adj. referring to the flower still closed in the early hours of the morning), fruconi (whitish peduncle that connects the three pistils; it is eliminated during processing in as it does not contain the essential elements present in the pistils).

In concrete terms, this spice fully enters the culture and traditions of the Sardinian people