The Carnaroli and Arborio varieties are ideal for making risotto: absorbent rice cooked with various other ingredients such as stew, beef broth, mushrooms, Gorgonzola blue cheese, oxtail, saffron – to make “yellow risotto” – and Barolo or Barbera red wine.

With large and pearly grains, Carnaroli is considered the “king of rice” by Italians.

“It is Italian excellence, a symbol of our Made-in-Italy, the ideal rice for risotto,” says Piero Rondolino, owner of the Tenuta Colombara farm, one of the nation’s leading artisan producers of Carnaroli.

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“It differs from the Asian rice varieties in that our rice belongs to another genetic family; the grains are larger and more roundish while the Asian varieties tend to be more elongated and do not grow at high altitude like ours,” Rondolino says. “Above all, in our culture, rice is eaten as a main course containing all the necessary nutrients, not as a side dish.”

Italian rice has high amounts of amylose, a type of glucose, which means the grains do not stick together but remain individually defined. The central pearl, the slightly porous opalescent interior of each Carnaroli grain, allows for better absorption of flavours during cooking. This is an essential characteristic for dishes like risotto, which are cooked in direct contact with other ingredients to best absorb their flavours.

Carnaroli is also ideal for making “rice salads”: cold rice mixed with vegetables, meat or fish, and for the fried balls of rice, tomato and breadcrumbs called arancini and suppli, popular in southern Italy.

Rondolino grows a premium Carnaroli, which he has called “acquerello”. Aged for at least a year in refrigerated silos, this type of rice is more stable, the flavour is enhanced and it has a higher cooking consistency than standard Carnaroli, he says. He also uses a gentle processing method that leaves the grain intact.

“Our rice is also the healthiest, because thanks to a patented process, the rice germ is reabsorbed in grains, leaving them with all the nutritional value of brown rice,” says Rondolino, who exports to 59 countries and regions, including Hong Kong.

The Tenuta Colombara rice-producing estate was established in 1400. With both a church and school on site, in the past it was home to dozens of farming families existing harmoniously in a tight-knit community.

Now, the estate is home to a rice museum that features a dormitory dating from the early 1800s, where the women rice-weeders, known as mondine, slept after tending the paddies. The original furniture, linen and various everyday items are on display – beds, sheets, newspapers, towels and the women’s working clothes.

“We tried to preserve the old ambience intact,” says Rondolino. “These incredible women worked for 40 days each year spring-cleaning the rice plants of weeds. They were Italian seasonal migrants coming from the poorer south, and thanks to a high salary agreed by trade unions they were actually paid more than the men.”

Italy’s leading rice production region of Piedmont includes a tiny corner – the Biella and Vercelli Baraggia area – at the northern limit of the rice triangle, at the foot of the Alps.

Here grows the only Italian rice granted Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status by the European Union because of the exceptional qualities of the grain as a result of the specific nature of the land on which it grows.

“Ours is a niche production,” says Biella and Vercelli Baraggia Rice PDO consortium president Carlo Zaccaria. “The soil here is rich in clay, compact, and lacking in humus, typical of lands once covered in glaciers. It has always been extremely hard for our ancestors to cultivate anything, but when rice arrived, they understood it could find an ideal habitat here.”

The consortium comprises about 30 producers with farms spread over 25,000 hectares (6,200 acres) and they grow several rice varieties, primarily Carnaroli, Arborio and Sant’Andrea. The cultivation is not intensive, but the rice is of extremely high quality.

“We account for just 20 per cent of Piedmont’s rice production but our rice is special, different,” says Zaccaria. “Temperatures here are colder than in the rest of the region; we’re close to the snowy peaks, which makes rice cultivation particularly challenging.”

The harsh climate causes the grains to form more quickly during maturation, so they are smaller, with more compact cellular textures. This gives the rice excellent consistency and a higher resistance to cooking, he adds, meaning it can better absorb flavours.

Baraggia rice is exported worldwide, including to Japan and Hong Kong. According to Zaccaria, Asians appreciate the characteristic taste and crunchiness – the fact that the grains do not stick together in a chewy way.

“Our rice is extremely savoury, it has a specific identity,” he adds. “Just like the best wine is often made in small, tough but niche lands, the same can be said of rice.”

Italy’s rice revolution began at the abbey of Lucedio, near Vercelli, in the rice triangle. Now a top rice producing farm and estate, the abbey was built in 1123 by French monks who drained the nearby marshlands and began to cultivate the grain in the 1400s.

“The monks spread rice culture all across Piedmont and over to the other regions, passing on the know-how to smaller abbeys and monasteries,” says Count Paolo Salvadori, who runs the estate. “The water-rich soil was extremely fertile. When rice stopped being used as a mere medicine or spice, and turned into a nutritious source of food for families, it became such a profitable business that it was even taxed.”

The estate is now a historical and artistic site where monks’ cells have been preserved and special events are held, including risotto tasting sessions.

“Unfortunately Italians do not eat much rice, there’s this stereotype that rice is given to the sick and weak, to those recovering in hospital,” Salvadori adds. “Even today, if someone has a stomach ache, he’s fed a dish of white plain rice.”

Yet, according to the count, risotto can be a nobler and more sophisticated dish than pasta. “The perfect risotto over here is dubbed ‘risotto all’onda’ – ‘like a wave’,” he adds. “When you slightly shake the dish, the cooked rice should gently move, with the grains amalgamated into a creamy mass, not sticky. That’s when you’re sure that the risotto, and the rice, are of good quality.”

Michelin-star chef Marta Grassi of Tantris restaurant in Novara remembers a rice stock exchange that existed a few decades ago in her town, with screaming producers closeted in telephone booths eager to sell their rice at the highest price.

“It was called the ‘market of men’ because the women stayed home running the farms,” she says. “Landowners rented the fields to tenants. Rice was, and still is, the pillar of our economy.”

Grassi likes to play with tradition. She prepares innovative risotto dishes made with red chicory, beetroot powder and almonds, and risotto with cuttlefish and cherries. Her rice desserts are prepared with rose syrup, milk and nuts.

“I have a constant dialogue with producers so they provide me the best Carnaroli suitable for my dishes and restaurant,” she says. The Carnaroli she uses can cost up to €8 per kilogram (US$4.30 per pound).

“They have developed techniques that can prolong cooking time,” Grassi adds. “I can play with Carnaroli’s spectacular properties to buy time when a client steps out for a cigarette: the risotto he will eat once back at the table will still be of an exceptional quality, crunchy on the outside, soft inside.”