The Red Onion of Breme boasts the certificate of Municipal Designation of Origin since 2008, the year in which it was officially established by the Municipality of Breme, to protect its identity and to recognize its link with the territory.
Its history, in fact, goes back thousands of years. It was the monks of Novalesa who began its cultivation on this land considered "fertile, pleasant and fruitful". It is thanks to these qualities, together with the microclimate of the area, that the onion has unique taste and organoleptic properties, such as its sweet flavor (superior to that of Tropea Onion) that earned it the name of "La Dolcissima" , its crunchiness and its high digestibility. These characteristics allow a varied use in the kitchen starting from marmalade jams, to be enjoyed also in combination with cheeses, mustard compote, without excluding other typical dishes of the area such as Carnaroli risotto with dehydrated onion, oil with onion, desserts, cakes, sweet and sour onions and pizzas.
As per tradition, the cultivation of the onion with its characteristic flattened shape and intense red color takes place manually and, in full respect of the territory, without the use of herbicides only and exclusively in the land of Lomellina, more precisely in Breme, where its production is limited.
In order to preserve this variety of onion, its seeds are kept in the seed bank of the Botanical Garden of the Department of the University of Pavia and in Norway, in the most important seed bank in the world, since February 2018 thanks to Prof. Graziano Rossi of the University of Pavia.
Since 2014, the Association of Red Onion Producers De.C.O. was created due to the increasing number of requests from private and non-private consumers, both nationally and internationally (it is also exported to England, Switzerland and France) to guarantee the quantity, but above all the quality of this delicacy.
Since November 2014, however, "La Dolcissima" is registered in the National Register of horticultural varieties for conservation (the first variety in all of Lombardy).
The Dolcissima is celebrated every year in Breme from the second Sunday of June. For more information on the event: 40th festival of the Red Onion De.C.O. by Breme.