Aosta · Italy

Genepì

Genepì is a liqueur made from a plant that grows only high up, among the stones, above 2,000 metres and often higher. It is a small artemisia with a strong scent, and to gather it you must climb to where almost nothing else grows. That explains everything else. Picking is regulated, the quantity per person is limited and in some areas it is forbidden altogether, because a plant that takes years to form disappears in one season if it is all taken. The household recipe is remembered as three numbers: forty sprigs, forty days, forty lumps of sugar, in a litre of spirit. It is left to infuse in the dark, strained, and waited for. The result is a herbal bitterness drunk after dinner, and it appears in the cup of friendship as well. A glass of genepì is a piece of mountain that somebody walked up to fetch.

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May I pick it?

Not without checking first. Picking is governed by regional rules, with quantity limits and prohibitions in protected areas, and inside the Gran Paradiso National Park it is forbidden. The rules exist because the plant grows slowly and in fragile sites, where one bad season is enough to remove a colony. Anyone wanting to try the recipe can buy dried genepì, legally gathered or cultivated, and the result is the same without the damage.

Why does it grow only high up?

Because it is adapted to a place where almost nothing else endures: little soil, a great deal of wind, a summer that lasts weeks. In exchange for the hardship it gains the privilege of having no competition. The essential oils that give it its scent and taste are largely a defence against cold and against ultraviolet radiation, which at that altitude is fierce. In other words, the flavour of genepì is what the plant produces in order to survive where it stands.

How is it drunk?

Cold, in small glasses, after dinner. At home the bottle lives in the freezer, where the alcohol does not freeze and the liqueur turns thick. People who make their own will serve it and tell you which slope the plant came from, because the flavour changes with the site. It also goes into caffè alla valdostana, with the grappa, in the cup of friendship. It is not a digestif for visitors: in the houses of this valley it is the ordinary way to close an important meal.

Where it is

45.7368, 7.3192 · Open in Maps

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