Persi"", in Italian it is the remote past tense of the verb to lose, but it is not so in Canale d'Alba, where ""persi"" represents a victory, a success to be proud of: ""persi"" in Piedmontese dialect means peach, the delicious fruit that has found a home in Canale and the Roero area, affecting, and not a little, its economic life. The peach tree cultivation in these areas dates back to the second half of the 19th century when phylloxera was wreaking havoc on the vineyards. In 1885, the lawyer Ettore Ferrio, an agronomist by passion, experimented with the introduction of some American varieties, which were significantly more resistant than the native species, starting a real revolutionary fruit-growing activity that soon became a driving force. By the beginning of the 20th century, peaches were a certainty, to the extent that a busy market was organised around this fruit, covering a large part of the village and bringing many wholesalers from all over Italy to Canale. A period of prosperity followed, but post-war competition became more pressing and the peach tree was replaced by other crops. Nevertheless, small productions of excellence remained: varieties of peaches mainly marked by their small size, thick skin, white flesh with red veins, firm with an intense, complex, aromatic scent and an extremely rich flavour, qualities that make them highly sought after by haute cuisine today.
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