The Ice Cream Makers' Winter

For generations, like swallows, they have migrated north in spring to their family businesses, which have names like Dolomiti, San Marco or Riva, and returned south again in winter, home to their Italian villages in the Val di Zoldo. The ceremony with which the Italian ice cream makers reopen their parlours after the winter season might well be different in Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Hungary or Austria. As well as the recipes, ingredients and flavours of ice cream may differ from town to town, from country to country. But one thing unites the Italian ice cream makers who run their ice cream parlours north of the Alps: the majority of them come from the Val di Zoldo, a narrow, picturesque valley in the Dolomites.