Artisanal ice cream: 1st national sensory tasting tour started

From Florence to Aprilia, a journey through Italian taste through 300 ice cream parlors with Slow Food Editore and ice cream master Roberto Lobrano.

From Florence to Aprilia, a journey through Italian taste with Slow Food Editore and ice cream master Roberto Lobrano A National Sensory Tasting Tour will cross the entire peninsula to discover Italian artisan ice cream. Starting point is an ice cream parlor in Florence, one of the best in Italy of the over 300 published in the manual Il mondo del gelato published by Slow Food Editore. The Tour is led by Roberto Lobrano, author of the manual and ice cream master Roberto Lobrano, with the aim of carrying out a national research on the perception of the taste of ice cream, with a sensory analysis test developed with the Bologna Research Area of the CNR.
Artisanal Gelato represents a historically important reality for Italy. Not everyone knows, in fact, that the first form of modern ice cream is owed to an Italian, a Sicilian cook, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, who after many failures and successive improvements, arrived in Paris, where he opened in 1686 a place that still exists today, the Café Ptrocope, where a large variety of ice creams were served. Later, given the enormous success achieved, it moved to new and larger premises (today in rue de l'Ancienne Comédie), opposite the "Comedie Francais" (the theatre, founded in 1680, would later move to the current headquarters in 1799). That "Café" offered: "frozen water" (granite), fruit ice cream, "anise flowers", "cinnamon flowers", "frangipane", "lemon juice ice cream", "orange juice ice cream ”, “strawberry sorbet”, in a “royal license” (a concession) with which Louis XIV had given Procopius the exclusive rights to those sweets.

And thanks to this tradition, our country is the only nation in the world where artisanal ice cream covers 55% of the market, thanks to the widespread coverage, history, tradition, the habit of ice cream on the go and the professionalism of the employees. A heritage that the world envies us and which for this reason must be promoted and safeguarded.

But it is also true that «We are flooded with cold preparations called ice cream without distinction and which are often something else - says Lobrano - to recognize their qualities, it is necessary to fully understand the product and its territorial variations, its historical path and the laws that are hidden behind its apparent simplicity.».
It is not just a new event that involves the public in the sensory analysis of one of the most loved products by Italians: it is the first socio-cultural and anthropological journey on the perception and taste of consumers, with reference to homemade ice cream, on a national. Once registered, participants will be able to try their hand at a series of tests, vote with their smartphone and thus participate in the research. The tests will be of a quantitative-descriptive nature and will compare three different types of ice cream each time, through which you will learn to recognize their quality by highlighting the differences.

In addition to the scientific content, the playful component will not be missing: the public will be involved in blind tastings with the use of masks, in which they will have to identify (without visual references and with the sole help of their gustatory, olfactory and tactile senses) the various ingredients of special ice cream flavors created for the occasion…

With the project carried out in collaboration with Slow Food Editore and the ice cream parlors involved, Roberto Lobrano will also launch a solidarity campaign in favor of the Valpolcevera farms involved in the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa. This is how sensory tasting will also become a moment of solidarity and will lead us to discover the world of artisan gelato, celebrating the excellence of Italian craftsmanship and quality together with the scientific world.

The results of the tests will expand the research already introduced in the book Il mondo del gelato, written for Slow Food Editore by Roberto Lobrano, gelato maker and president of the Gelatieri per il Gelato association. A handbook that provides an in-depth and complete overview of artisan gelato, from history to sensory analysis via chemical composition and production techniques. The volume also presents a complete recipe book to prepare, at home or in the laboratory, an ice cream with quality and seasonal ingredients, without using semi-finished compounds.

Indispensable to kick off the tour of tastings around Italy was the removable insert with the addresses of the 322 ice cream parlors that best interpret artisanal ice cream according to the author, among which he has selected, region by region , the stages of a tour that will draw the first map of the perception of taste on ice cream. For information on how to nominate your own ice cream shop as a stop on the tour, you can send an email to info@robertolobrano.com or call 347 276 2104, while to participate as tasters you need to book by contacting the individual ice cream shop.

Tour stops announced so far:

11 April FLORENCE, Gelateria Della Passera – Via Toscanella 15/r

13 April LUCCA, Gelateria De Coltelli – Via San Paolino 10

16 April GENOA, Gelateria Gelatina – Via Garibaldi 20/r

27 April MAROTTA (PU), Gelateria Joseph – Viale Carducci 63

4 May LUCCA, Cremeria Opera – Viale Gaetano Luporini 951

5 May AREZZO, Cremeria Cecconi – Via della Madonna del Prato 85

8 May ORBASSANO (TO), Gelateria Golosia – Via Maria Montessori 8/a

15 May L'AQUILA, Gelateria Bar Duomo – Piazza Duomo 32

18 May BUSTO ARSIZIO (VA), Il Dolce Sogno Gelateria – Viale Vittorio Alfieri 28

21 May PERUGIA, Gelateria Gambrinus – Via Luigi Bonazzi 3

23 May PISA, Gelateria De Coltelli – Lungarno Antonio Pacinotti 23