In September, you can find crates spilling over with dusty, pale, copper-tinged grapes – ansonica (also written ‘ansonaco’) grapes to be precise. When the fruit and vegetable shop down the road starts practically giving them away for a euro a kilo, it’s a sign that it’s vendemmia (or grape harvest) season.
When I saw the huge crates of grapes piling up at the fruit shop, I couldn’t help but buy a few kilograms. I may not be able to make wine, but I can always make jam – and I found that these grapes make a wonderful, firm and intensely fragrant jam, rather reminiscent of quince paste, with an unexpectedly intense, rusty colour. It is lovely with cheese, especially something fresh like goat’s curd, or sharp and bitey like a blue cheese. Not far from Orbetello, there is a beautiful farm and winery called La Parrina, where they make a range of delicious sheep’s milk and cow’s milk cheeses, including a unique gooey blue cheese called Guttus, which is exactly what I like to eat with this jam.
Making jam with grapes alone is a traditional way to use up excess fruit in central Italy, and it is my preference for this recipe. However, it requires an eagle eye and it is much easier to make this jam with a little sugar in it to help it set (you will, of course, end up with more jam this way, too), so I offer both methods below. Cooking the juice down is the tricky part and reminds me a little of melting sugar down into caramel – you really don’t want to stray too far away from the pot, because it will easily misbehave and go too far. Once, while my back was turned, the jam turned so solid that I couldn’t even cut into it. You could have bounced it off the walls.