Val di Non

How apples came

The specification of the protected designation of origin (PDO), Mela Val di Non, finds the apple deep in the valley’s past: Malè, in the Val di Sole, takes its name from the Latin Maletum, “place of apples”, as Malosco does; village charters of 1564 and 1641 are cited as witnesses; and in 1739 a noble family was asked to send a basket of “pomi rosmarini” to Vienna, where they were already prized¹. The orchards are younger. A provincial study of Trentino’s farm landscapes finds no specialised apple orchards in the valley before 1850; apples grew mostly in the small walled gardens of the better-off, while the fields were given to the mulberry².

Disease made the change. When the mulberry and the vine were struck in the second half of the nineteenth century, many families emigrated, and some of those who stayed planted apples^3,4. The first orchards, of tall, widely spaced trees, went in above the limits of the vine and the mulberry, and the agricultural institute at San Michele all’Adige, founded in 1874, kept an experimental station and nursery in the valley with 150 apple varieties, among them late French cider apples, to spread among the growers of southern Tyrol². Prizes followed at exhibitions in Vienna^2,4.

By the end of the 1930s, the growers’ consortium says, 40% of Trentino’s fruit came from the Val di Non and 70% of its exports left from there⁴. Trees still stood in hay meadows, 80 to 100 to the hectare and about 10 m apart, and in the 1920s and 1930s public nurseries handed out free trees to plant there². After the Second World War the growers formed co-operatives³. Clonal rootstocks brought intensive orchards of a single variety, Golden Delicious, in the 1970s, and by the 1990s the valley was an apple monoculture that had given up the pear and the mowing of orchard grass for hay². In 1989 a consortium, Melinda, was founded at Cles; it unites all sixteen of the area’s co-operatives and more than 4,000 member growers³. The PDO was registered by an EU regulation of 22 September 2003⁵.

How they’re grown

The Val di Non is less a valley than a plateau, known for apples grown high²; its orchards lie between 500 and 1,000 m³, having climbed to that height as temperatures rose in the 1960s and 1970s, by the consortium’s account⁴. The PDO covers the catchment of the Noce torrent in the Val di Non and the Val di Sole, in the province of Trento. Its specification credits calcareous-dolomitic soils found in no other fruit district, and autumns in which nights of 2–6 °C follow days of 18–22 °C; hail is uncommon and damaging spring frosts fairly rare. Orchards are watered as needed from March to October, grass is kept between the rows, and every tree is pruned by hand in winter¹.

Small, close-set trees with drip irrigation and hail nets have replaced the old tall trees in meadows⁴. The trees flower around mid-April, and sprinklers that coat the buds in protective ice are used on only a few hectares³; hail hit parts of the valleys in late spring and early summer 2025¹². The work depends on outsiders: in 2024 the provincial labour agency recorded 13,681 farm hires in the Val di Non and 893 in the Val di Sole, half of all farm hires in the province, 81% of them foreign workers and 26% women¹². The PDO’s yield cap of 68 t/ha¹ would rise to 90 t/ha under a revision put out for objection in September 2026¹¹.

What’s picked

About 6,500 of Trentino’s roughly 9,500 ha of apple orchards were in the Val di Non, according to the provincial study of 2017². ISTAT’s figures, published by the province’s statistics institute, give Trentino 5.1 million quintals (510,000 tonnes) of apples in 2021 and 4,860,000 quintals (486,000 tonnes) in 2023, when Italy’s total was 22,677,454 quintals^7,8. Apples, mostly Golden Delicious, make up about 80% of the value of Trentino’s fruit, and almost every farm business in the Val di Non grows fruit⁷. The PDO certified 151,431 tonnes in 2022 and 125,670 tonnes in 2023, worth €63 million at production in 2023⁹, and one PDO apple in five is exported¹⁰. The consortium takes more than 98% of the valleys’ apples, about 400,000 tonnes a year³.

Only Golden Delicious, Renetta Canada and Red Delicious may carry the PDO¹; all three have been grown here for more than sixty years³. The specification allows picking by hand only, in August, September, October and the first half of November as each variety ripens¹; the consortium’s own season runs from mid-August, with Gala among the first, to the end of October, with Fuji last¹³.

Part of the crop is kept inside a mountain. In the Rio Maggiore dolomite mine at Tuennetto di Predaia, in galleries about 300 m deep³, twelve controlled-atmosphere rooms in a first lot and eleven in a second were open by December 2016, holding about 19,000 tonnes; they lie at about 575 m above sea level and 275 m beneath the orchards above, the rock insulates them, and they use roughly half the energy of stores built in the open⁶. By 2022 the consortium kept 30,000 tonnes there, at 1 °C with the oxygen lowered to 1.3%³.

On the table

The specification says the Renetta Canada changes as it keeps, from crisp, sharply acid flesh to soft and sweet¹. The harvest is celebrated at Pomaria, a festival begun at Casez in 2005, whose twentieth edition was set for 17 and 18 October 2026, back at Casez; its name recalls the Latin pomarium, an orchard, and Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit. Its programme included cookery workshops on three Trentino traditions, apple strudel, canederli and ricotta gnocchi¹⁴. The historic orchard at Cles keeps 80 old apple varieties^3,14.

The Italian word is mela¹⁵. In the valley’s Nones dialect apples are pomi¹⁴, from pomo, which Treccani records as a word for the apple now popular only in some regions¹⁶.

Notes

• A provincial study calls the Rosa di Fondo, an apple tree of the upper Val di Non put at 240 years old, the largest living apple tree in Europe and probably one of the oldest².
• A 2006 survey at Sarnonico and Seio counted 833 fruit trees over 50 years old, 331 of them apples².
• Trentino’s 2025 crop was forecast at 5% more than the year before¹².

Where the sources disagree

• How old the orchards are. The specification traces the valley’s apples to a Latin place name, charters of 1564 and 1641 and a letter of 1739¹; the provincial study, Il Post and the consortium find no apple orchards before about 1850^2,3,4. The study reconciles them: fruit trees are old here, but grew in walled gardens, not in the fields².
• Vienna. The growers’ consortium dates the first prize to the World Exhibition of 1873⁴; the provincial study records Trentino’s success at a Vienna fruit exhibition in 1888².
• Growers. The specification speaks of more than 5,000 producers¹, Il Post of more than 4,000 consortium members³, the PDO’s control body of almost 4,000 operators¹⁰.
• The mine. Il Post dates the trials to 2011 and regular use to 2015³; the province’s 2016 release has a pilot from 2012. It gave about 19,000 tonnes of capacity in 2016⁶; Il Post reported 30,000 tonnes stored in 2022³.
• Area and share. No official statistic of apple area or output for the Val di Non alone was found; the 6,500 ha is the provincial study’s round figure². The province’s 2026 release credits the two valleys with about 20% of Italy’s apples¹⁴; on ISTAT’s 2023 figures all of Trentino grew about 21%⁸, an inference. The consortium’s 400,000 tonnes³ covers the Val di Sole and all varieties; the certified tonnage⁹ counts only apples sold under the PDO.
• The season. The specification’s picking runs into the first half of November¹, the consortium’s to the end of October¹³.