There's no easy way to make pesto. To start with, says Guido Porrati, this classic Italian sauce won't be much good unless it's been ground in a mortar made from Carrara marble. The pestle should be crafted from pear wood – impervious to odours, it won't taint the paste's sublime flavours. And the ingredients must be sourced with the greatest of care.
"The best pinenuts come exactly from Pisa," Porrati says. "You start crushing like this, and you have to make sure all the walls of the mortar are very dirty."
Porrati clasps the mortar to his chest and pummels the pinenuts and garlic cloves contained within it. He plucks bouquets of basil from a table heaving with local produce – olive tapenade, salami, vino – adds them to the mortar and pounds and grinds. Their scent fills the air, overpowering the pine needles and geranium blooms that have until now perfumed this garden.
Porrati has come to Portofino from the nearby town of Rapallo, where he runs a specialty market, Parla Come Mangi. He is standing in the hilltop garden of Castello Brown, making pesto for guests of Windstar's Star Legend, which is moored just out of sight in the Ligurian Sea.
Behind Porrati, the cliffs descend steeply to meet Portofino's tiny harbour. The sun shines lavishly upon this picture book scene: houses snuggle against the hillsides in orchestrated shades of ochre and terracotta and rose gold; yachts line up in tightly packed berths; bright fishing boats tug at their moorings. Anchoring the scene is Portofino's stamp-sized piazetta, where tourists sip coffee, eat gelato and browse upmarket boutiques.
"Very small! Very expensive!" my guide Silvia Massa had said earlier of this square.
But up here on the hilltop we discover that pesto, which was born in this province of Liguria, is not exclusive at all. In fact, it began as a humble garlic sauce used to mask the taste of meat that had gone bad. Basil was later added to temper the garlic's piquancy.
"On the hills of Genova there grows a basil that is very soft, very perfumed," Porrati says. "It doesn't have the mint scent of usual basils. It is better to pick the smaller, tastier leaves."
But it's the addition of cheese that is perhaps the most crucial step in the making of pesto, Porrati says, for an inferior product will most certainly result in an inferior dish.
"You must add parmigiana reggiano," he says. "And please, don't call it parmesan. That could come from Boston."
Porrati gestures out over the rooftops of the houses settled on the hillside opposite us towards Liguria and the region of Emilia-Romagna, which lies beyond the Apennine mountain range. This is where Porrati sources his cheese; it's one of the few places where genuine parmigiana reggiano is made. There's a dash of pecorino contained in his pesto, too, an unpasteurised sheep's milk cheese which comes from Sardinia and is flavoured with the flowers and herbs on which the herd feasts during summer.
But the final ingredient, extra virgin olive oil, should come from home, Porrati says. He adds to the mortar a good glug of Ligurian oil, made from a unique variety of small, sweet olives, first cultivated here by St Columban monks. Where Umbrian oil is spicy, he explains, Ligurian is elegant.
And with that the pesto is done. Porrati offers glasses of Colline del Genovesato, made from muscat grapes grown in the Apennine watershed and caressed by the warm Mediterranean breeze. He tears chunks of focaccia and we dip them into his humble, authentic offering. I imagine those 18th-century Italians who used it to mask the taste of rotting food; it's come a long way from such unpalatable beginnings.
TRIP NOTES
MORE INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
Qantas offers direct daily flights from Sydney and Melbourne to Rome via Dubai with codeshare partner Emirates. See www.qantas.com.au
TOURING THERE
Windstar Cruises sails from Rome to Barcelona and vice versa. Star Legend departs Rome on May 26 2016 for a seven night voyage and costs from $4638 a person twin share, including cruise accommodation, all meals onboard, champagne welcome reception, a complimentary Windstar Private Event in Portofino and access to the open bridge. Travel the World, phone 1300 857 437, see www.traveltheworld.com.au
The writer was a guest of Windstar Cruises.