Styrian Pumpkin Seed Oil P.G.I. is a true gift from nature. It is a guaranteed natural speciality and is produced without the addition of other oils, food colourings, aromas or preservatives. It gets its typical and one of a kind character from the Styrian earth the Styrian oil pumpkin grows in.
A sun-rich climate, as found in the South and East of Austria, is in addition to the unique earth a prerequisite for the high quality of this product. Especially the temperature changes between day and night, as well as the sun-rich autumn, provide us with the best pumpkin seeds. These special conditions ensure the unique qualities of the seeds. The plump dark green seeds then lend the resulting Styrian Pumpkin Seed Oil P.G.I. its outstanding taste as well as its typical deep green colour with reddish overtones.
Shell-less Pumpkin Seeds
The pumpkin is one of the world's oldest cultivated plants, the earliest finds of the common pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) have been dated to 10 700 to 9 200 B.C. and come from southern Mexico. The pumpkin most likely first came to Europe after the discovery of America. An important point to remember is that these early pumpkin seeds had a thick shell, as all members of the pumpkin family originally did. Nonetheless, the production of pumpkin seed oil from shelled pumpkin seeds has been traced as far back as the 18th century.
The first soft-shelled mutant, known today as the Styrian oil pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo var. styriaca), arose among the pumpkins cultivated for their seed oil toward the end of the 19th century. This natural mutation of the pumpkin seeds dramatically changed the oil production procedure, because the seeds had had to be hand shelled up to this point.
In the meantime, we can look back at over a hundred years of experience and success producing oil from the plump, dark green and shell-less Styrian pumpkin seeds.
The Raw Material
Growing Regions
The Styrian oil pumpkin is cultivated predominately in Styria and specifically in certain favoured regions of East Styria, although the shell-less oil pumpkin is also grown in bordering regions of Slovenia and Hungary and other Eastern European countries. However, the Austrian pumpkin growing regions provide the ideal conditions for the oil pumpkin, with the result that the quality of Styrian Pumpkin Seed Oil P.G.I. rises above that of other pumpkin seed oils.
Pumpkin Seeds
The seeds are sown in the end of April or beginning of May. They are sown in rows, so that it is possible to easily remove weeds by tilling the soil between them. Depending on the weather conditions, the harvest takes place between the middle of September and the middle of October, usually using modern seed harvesting machinery. The seeds are only seldom harvested by hand, this involves laboriously halving the pumpkins and then the tedious work of separating the seeds from the pumpkin flesh, traditionally called "auspatzelen" in Styrian dialect. After they are harvested, the seeds are washed, cleaned of remaining pumpkin flesh and dried for further storage.
Fotocredits: Stefan Kristoferitsch; Jörg Böthling
