Flavoring and aging: the new frontier of taste

The choice of consumers for new flavored products is one of those trends that, even at the last edition of Cibus in Parma, emerges with the greatest market favor. From millennials to baby boomers, there is a constant search for these very particular products. The first to create this type of food were the cheese refiners who worked with spices, natural aromas, medicinal herbs, distillates, fruits, and vegetables. In short, a creativity that has never been seen before and which in the last ten years has profoundly marked the field of refined cheeses in the world of Italian cheeses and international cheeses.

People no longer just want to eat; they seek emotion and, above all, they want to fill their "deficits of happiness" with foods that make them smile and leave a deep sense of pleasantness on the palate. Food that becomes a status, a social booster, and a fundamental element for the growth of a community. The search for flavoring techniques in food has grown increasingly along with the rise in the value of technology in the production sector. Today, food technologists have become true gurus to whom the creativity and dreams of producers are entrusted, seeking in every way to be contemporary and innovative.

The world of flavored oils, for example, is surely the one, after cheeses, that has been most affected by this phenomenon of food flavoring. At first, it was enough to insert small pieces of aromatic herbs into bottles, but then it was finally understood that this solution is absolutely the worst and affects the quality of both the starting oil and the final product. Oxidative phenomena and bitter sensations were a constant in these oils that were served on the tables of pizzerias and restaurants, sometimes unpalatable. But who knows how many times we too could not resist a bottle of pepper oil with a nice witness inside.

Today, flavorings are made by cold extraction of essential oils which then blend pleasantly into the entire mass of the starting oil. And here we even have products with oils of lavender, thyme, rosemary, and wild mint, which become even more enjoyable.

In the field of flavored products, very interesting are also the cured meats that are recently being refined in the presence of special spices or wines. A trend that is increasingly capturing consumers, curious about and attracted to such rare solutions. The phenomenon of food flavoring with Amarone, for example, has made the fortune of some delicatessens, not only in Northern Italy. The demand for this wine is so strong that there are wineries producing lines suitable for flavoring cured meats. The same applies to the drunken cheeses that use wines and the same Amarone from Valpolicella DOCG. A boom that knows no end.

Last but not least are the chocolates. One example is Sabadì, which flavors its Modica chocolate, thus giving it unexpected flavors.

Now it’s worth a try. Take a trip through our shelves and you will find many of these products. We wanted to choose first of all the quality and the technology adopted, so that the pleasantness of the raw material would not be completely ruined.

Bernardo Pasquali