Another bright and delicious symbol of Sicily is the Sicilian blood orange – arancia rossa. Here we say that a blood orange is born where the snow of Mount Etna meets the Sicilian sun. That’s why you can only truly enjoy it during the snowy season – from December to March.
I once read that Sicilian orange trees were planted in other regions and countries, but they never produced our famous deep red colour. I especially liked one phrase: “Even the tree doesn’t know what colour its fruit will be.” The same tree can bear both orange and red oranges. The only way to know what you’re about to eat is to peel it. By the way, don’t throw the peel away – you can use it to make homemade rosolio all’arancia rossa, a traditional liqueur that was essentially the predecessor of the more complex Amara. It was easy to make at home by simply combining alcohol, orange peel and sugar syrup.
Arancia rossa is the only orange in the world that actually needs cold nights. Scientists even discovered a special gene that activates the production of the red pigment when there is a significant difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures. In other words, the very same tree will not develop that famous red colour if the nights are too warm. That is why the finest blood oranges are grown on the slopes of Mount Etna. Warm sunshine during the day, cold nights, and volcanic soil – considered among the most fertile in the world – create the perfect conditions.
I can’t really describe the taste of a blood orange, simply because there are so many different varieties. In Sicily, they are appreciated almost the way wine is. Professional tasters don’t compare them to other oranges – they describe notes of wild berries, raspberries, grapes and much more. I can’t detect all those flavours myself, but one thing is certain: these oranges are incredibly delicious, wonderfully diverse, and very, very red.