Piennolo Tomato

Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio is a protected designation of origin, registered in 2009, covering small tomatoes grown on the slopes of Vesuvius and Monte Somma inside the national park, across some twenty towns in the province of Naples.

Piennolo is Neapolitan for pendulum, and it describes the storage method rather than the fruit. Whole bunches are tied around a ring of hemp twine into a squashed sphere, the schiocca, which is hung from a nail in a dry, ventilated room. Tomatoes are then pulled off one at a time over the following months.

The fruit is small, 15 to 25 grams, oval, with a pronounced pointed tip and a couple of ribs. The skin is thick and leathery, the flesh dense, the dry matter high and the water content low. It tastes sharp before it tastes sweet, with a salty, almost mineral finish: this is not a salad tomato that has been bred for sugar, it is a tomato bred to cook and to last.

The permitted ecotypes are old and local (Fiaschello, Patanara, Principe Borghese, Lampadina, Re Umberto) selected over generations for keeping quality above all else. The DOP covers both the fresh hanging cluster and the jarred whole tomatoes, which is how most people outside Campania will meet it.

Sharp, savoury and concentrated. The acidity hits first, then a restrained sweetness underneath, then a salty mineral note that people who have eaten a lot of them attribute to the volcanic soil. Compared to a datterino it can taste almost austere.

The texture is the other surprise. The skin is genuinely tough, it pops rather than smears, and the flesh is dense with very little jelly and few seeds. Cooked fast in olive oil, the skins curl back and the flesh collapses into a sauce in seven or eight minutes without turning watery.

A hanging cluster changes over the winter. A tomato picked off in September is bright and juicy; the same cluster in February gives wrinkled fruit that has lost water and gained sweetness and intensity. Neither is spoiled: they are two different ingredients.

Treat it as a fast-cooking tomato. Warm olive oil with a garlic clove, drop the tomatoes in whole or crushed by hand, raise the heat, and in seven or eight minutes you have a sauce: skins curl back, flesh melts, acidity survives. No sugar, no long simmer, because long cooking wastes what makes it distinctive.

It is the tomato for spaghetti al pomodoro fresco, for a red vongole, for fish acqua pazza, for prawns and mussels. On a Vesuvian pizza it goes on raw in halves alongside fiordilatte, never blended.

In winter it does what no other fresh tomato can, because no other fresh tomato is there: on bruschetta with oil and oregano, wilted into escarole, over mozzarella, stirred into beans.

With the jarred version, drain the tomatoes, cook them as you would fresh ones and add a spoon of the liquid at the end. Leave the skins on: they are part of the character.

One Neapolitan habit worth copying: use it raw where you would otherwise reach for lemon, on poached salt cod or a plate of boiled greens.

The schiocca is made to hang, not to sit. It wants a dry, cool, dark, ventilated room between 10 and 18°C (50 and 64°F): a cellar, an understairs cupboard, a covered balcony in a northern climate. Laid flat on a surface, the fruit in contact with it softens and breaks down within days, because the air moving between the clusters is what does the preserving.

Hung properly, the tomatoes hold four to seven months. Take them from the bottom, one at a time, and look the bunch over now and then, pulling off any fruit showing mould before it reaches the ones touching it. The fridge is the wrong place: below 10°C the aroma drops away and the skin pits.

What changes across those months is the whole point. The fruit shrivels, loses water and grows sweeter and more concentrated, so a February piennolo is a different ingredient from a September one, better suited to slow sauces than to eating raw. Sealed jars keep two or three years in the cupboard; once opened, fridge, three or four days, tomatoes under their liquid.

Shape is the first sign: small and oval, with a pointed tip at the end. A perfectly round mini tomato is not piennolo, it is a cherry tomato. The skin is the second, thick and matte rather than thin and glossy. Squeeze one between two fingers and it resists, where a datterino gives way at once.

The third is the bunch. Fresh piennolo is sold as a schiocca, the hung cluster, or at least in whole trusses with the green woody stem attached. Loose in a punnet it may be a good tomato, but it is not the DOP in its typical form. The label should spell out Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio DOP with the European logo and the consortium. Vesuvian tomato, tomato from Vesuvius and piennolo style are none of those things.

On the palate it reads acidic before sweet, salty, almost mineral, and it holds together in a pan instead of collapsing. All sugar and no acid means a datterino. On a jar, the ingredients should say tomatoes, water and salt, and stop there.

Jars are the realistic route outside Italy. In the US, Gustiamo, Eataly and Italian importers carry DOP piennolo in 520 g jars; in the UK, Natoora, Sous Chef and Italian delicatessens stock it seasonally. Some Campanian producers ship fresh clusters within Italy from September onwards.

Check the label for the full wording Pomodorino del Piennolo del Vesuvio DOP with the EU mark. Pomodorino vesuviano, Vesuvius cherry tomato and piennolo-style are not the designation. On jars, the ingredients should read tomatoes, water, salt and nothing else: no concentrate, no added sugar, no acidity regulator.

Expect 4 to 8 euros for a 520 g jar in Italy, 9 to 16 dollars in the US (roughly 8 to 14 dollars a pound of drained fruit) and 7 to 12 pounds in the UK. Fresh clusters in Campania run 6 to 12 euros a kilo, and a two-kilo schiocca shipped within Italy costs 25 to 40 euros.

The slopes of Vesuvius, between Boscotrecase, Terzigno, Trecase and Somma Vesuviana, where farms inside the national park receive visitors from July to September and demonstrate the tying of the clusters. It takes a few minutes to watch and explains the whole product.

Naples itself, in pizzerias that name the tomato on the menu and in the trattorie of the centro storico and Santa Lucia, where in winter it turns up on bruschetta and in fish dishes.

Ercolano and Pompeii make the obvious pairing: the farms sit minutes from the archaeological sites, and many of them also grow Vesuvian apricots and make Lacryma Christi wine. Late summer is the season for the fresh harvest, but the more revealing visit is in January, when the clusters have been hanging for months and the tomatoes have concentrated.