Clusters' resources
Each Cluster promotes its own distinctive, quality and excellence resources in the various economic and production fields of tourist interest: wine and gastronomy, farm food products, handicrafts, accommodation services, transport services, etc. The adopted system aims at achieving the closest integration between cultural proposition and local resources of clusters.
From this high value perspective - also for the purposes of research and design activities at various levels - the farm food sector is extremely important, also with reference to the Longobard period.
Knowledge, food processing techniques and processed products are an integral part of any culture. Of course, it would be interesting to further investigate the Longobard period and migration from Northern to Southern Europe as today food traditions referring to the Longobards still exist (pork sausages, various plant species). These specialised aspects are all the more important as the presence of animal and plant specifies in those territories clearly shows how the influences of ancient peoples spread in those areas.
The food sector and, consequently, wine and gastronomy are particularly important - according to the Longobard system strategic lines - for the development and promotion of its reference territories. Their close cooperation is a strong element of tourist attractiveness as tourists are increasingly interested in knowing and tasting typical local specialities. Furthermore, targeted cooperation between the food sector and wine and gastronomy can have a favourable impact on economic development and offer new opportunities resulting from niche farm products or “forgotten” products of local popular traditions that could be relaunched.
These two sectors are very important. That is why the system was designed to create a local showcase of excellences in each cluster belonging to the Longobard Route. In this way, tourists are offered special journeys that enable them to taste and appreciate the variety of farm food, wine and gastronomy products of each territory. These goals are pursued thanks to agreements entered into with some trade organisations from the two sectors.
Animal fat culture and oil culture
Particularly important from the point of view of the history of diet is the encounter - favoured by the long permanence of the Longobards in Italy - between animal fat culture (typically Nordic) and oil culture (typically Mediterranean). A particular feature of the Italian peninsula is the distribution of territories based on the prevalence of one culture over another and, even before that, on the higher tendency of various areas to use ingredients of animal origin rather than those of plant origin.
During the preparation of the Route, between the Italian area and the North-German area, the first relations were already formed between producers referring to typical products traditionally assigned to the Longobards.
The most important example comes from the producers of preserved meats in Northern Germany (pork sausage is recognized as an ancestral product in the area) and producers in Bassiano (province of Latina, Lower Lazio), who make sausages and hams that involve special old wine production from Terracina that a deep-rooted local tradition attributes to the Longobards, together with a special method of pig rearing in the surviving cork woods of the area.
The theme of diet - based on criteria of sustainability, genuineness, quality, typicality - is an important part of the Route system that proposes to link the local production sectors to the catering activities engaged in offering wines and gastronomy based on the typical products of the location.
This operating procedure opens the way to scientific research, new types of crops aiming to boost niche or "forgotten" food products, and also new prospects of employment, especially for young people. Through the continuity of specialized supplies, this system favours a stronger relationship between country areas and towns in the various Clusters that would be strengthened even further by the creation of "Territory Showcases", which are founding elements among the Route's objectives.
