Bergamot

Bergamot is Citrus bergamia, a fruit between an orange and a sour orange in size, round or slightly pear-shaped, with thin smooth skin that turns from deep green to full yellow as the season advances. Genetic work points to a hybrid of sour orange with lemon or citron, but its origin is unsettled and even the name has three competing etymologies.

The flesh is not the point. The peel is. Its essential oil (linalyl acetate, linalool, limonene, plus furocoumarins including bergapten) has a composition with no equivalent among citrus fruits: floral, sharp and bitter at once, instantly recognisable and notoriously hard to reproduce synthetically.

One precision worth having. The PDO registered in 2001 covers Bergamotto di Reggio Calabria - Olio essenziale: what is legally protected is the oil pressed from the peel, not the fresh fruit on a market stall. That tells you everything about the history of this citrus, farmed for three hundred years as an industrial raw material rather than as something to eat.

There are three cultivars. Femminello, the oldest, is round with thin skin. Castagnaro is larger, hardier and rougher-skinned. Fantastico, a selection out of Castagnaro, is now the dominant planting: high-yielding and regular in shape.

Scratch the skin and you get the smell of Earl Grey tea, because that is exactly what it is: floral, resinous, orange-adjacent but with a cool bitter edge that no other citrus has.

The juice is a different experience. It is sharply acidic, comparable to lemon, and layered over that is a persistent bitterness stronger than grapefruit. Undiluted, most people find it close to unpleasant. Diluted and sweetened, or used a spoonful at a time, it becomes the most interesting citrus in the kitchen.

The flesh is greenish or pale yellow, seedy, and not eaten in segments. Nobody in Calabria peels a bergamot and eats it.

Rule one: do not drink the juice neat. It is bitter and very acidic, and it belongs in the kitchen as a seasoning rather than as a citrus. A few drops over raw fish, a spoonful in a vinaigrette, a tenth of the volume in a lemonade.

The zest is where the value sits. Microplaned over risotto, seafood pasta, pastry cream, panettone or a raw prawn tartare, it does something no lemon can. Add it off the heat: above about 70°C the aromatics leave with the steam.

The Calabrian preserves are marmalade, made from the peel after two or three changes of boiling water to pull out excess bitterness, and candied peel, usually dipped in dark chocolate. Beyond that: liqueurs, flavoured salt, and gelato, which in Reggio is on every serious counter.

In modern pastry, bergamot has become the bitter counterpoint of choice in white chocolate mousses and citrus creams, precisely because it brings more than acidity.

In drinks it is the most useful citrus there is: it replaces lemon in sours and stands up to juniper better than anything else. A strip of bergamot peel in a gin and tonic is the simplest demonstration.

One safety note. Bergamot furocoumarins, bergapten in particular, are phototoxic: essential oil on skin exposed to sunlight can cause burns and pigmentation, which is why cosmetics almost always use bergapten-free oil. Zest and juice in normal culinary quantities are not a concern.

Whole fruit keeps about a week in a bowl at room temperature and two to four weeks in the fridge drawer at around 5 to 8 C, loose or in a perforated bag rather than sealed plastic, since trapped condensation softens the skin. The thick rind is what protects it, and what happens over time is dehydration: the surface dulls and goes leathery, the oil glands empty, the fruit gets lighter in the hand, and the perfume that made it worth buying is the first thing to go. Take the zest early rather than late.

Because the season is short, most of it is preserved rather than stored. Juice freezes well in ice cube trays for several months and keeps its acidity better than its aroma; zest freezes in a bag, and strips of peel freeze whole. A cut fruit goes back in the fridge with the face covered and dries and browns at the edge over a few days. Jars of marmalade, candied peel and bottles of essential oil all carry a date from the producer, which is the reference for those.

A bergamot is about the size of an orange, round to faintly pear-shaped, with a smooth thick rind that is yellow shading to green depending on when it was picked, from November through March. The perfume is the identification: scratch the peel with a thumbnail and it releases a floral, slightly bitter scent that no lemon or lime produces, the exact smell of Earl Grey tea. A heavy fruit for its size has juice in it, and that juice is sharply sour, closer to lime than to orange.

Several things share the name. In North American and British herb shops, bergamot often means bee balm, the garden flower Monarda, sold dried as a tisane and unrelated to citrus. Bitter Seville orange has a rougher, deeper orange skin and no floral top note. Bergamot flavouring in tea and confectionery is an essence, not the fruit. Fresh bergamot rarely reaches shops outside Italy and turns up at specialist greengrocers in winter at a price several times that of lemons, if it appears at all.

Fresh bergamot is a January-and-February purchase or nothing. In the UK it is the easier of the two markets: Natoora, Italian delicatessens and some Waitrose and Ocado listings carry Calabrian fruit for a few weeks in midwinter, at roughly 8 to 15 pounds a kilo. In the US it is scarce: Californian growers produce small quantities sold through specialty produce distributors and farmers' markets in Southern California, and Italian fruit rarely clears import rules. Expect 10 to 20 dollars a pound when it appears.

Out of season, buy the processed forms. Bottled Calabrian juice runs 8 to 16 euros a litre and keeps for months unopened; marmalade is 6 to 10 euros for a 200-gram jar; candied peel and bergamot salt travel well. Essential oil retails at 8 to 20 euros for 10 millilitres, and the price makes sense once you know the yield: about 200 kilos of fruit for one kilo of oil.

What to check: thin, smooth, glossy skin; green in November and yellow by February, both correct; and above all the smell when you scratch it. For oil, look for the Bergamotto di Reggio Calabria PDO reference and the consortium. The word bergamot on a label of sweets, drinks or cosmetics guarantees nothing: synthetic aroma and non-Italian oil are both common.

The Ionian coast of the province of Reggio Calabria, between Melito di Porto Salvo, Condofuri, Bova Marina, Palizzi and Brancaleone. The groves are visible from the coast road, and several farms sell at the gate and run visits from December to February.

Bianco and Ferruzzano combine bergamot groves with the vineyards of Greco di Bianco, the local passito wine, which makes for the best single-day itinerary in the area.

Reggio Calabria itself has the Museo del Bergamotto, which keeps the historic extraction equipment: sponges and the nineteenth-century macchina calabrese included, and explains why the fruit was an industrial crop long before it was a culinary one. The city's gelaterie and pastry shops are the place to taste it made properly rather than as an industrial flavouring.

Go in January or February: peak harvest, fruit turning from green to yellow, and groves running down to the sea under the Aspromonte.