A visit to Oscar Zerbinati’s watermelon farm

Zerbinati’s Watermelon Kombucha is one of our most loved seasonal specials, not least in our own brewery. Its arrival brings loads of fresh Sentinel Watermelons into MOMO, and we get to tuck in.

Now, carving an 18kg juicy melon into bite-sized chunks is not the task you want to be left with in the middle of a working day… but it’s worth it for the incredible flavour.

In our fourth year brewing Zerbinati’s Watermelon Kombucha, we just had to see these amazing Watermelons first-hand. So, we travelled to the Italian province Mantua, where Oscar Zerbinati’s family farm baked beneath the heatwave.

Oscar’s land lies on the floodplain of the River Po, where the soil is packed with complex minerals and organic matter.

After a 90-minute drive from Bologna airport, we were plunged into Zerbinati’s watermelon farm. It’s been in the family for three generations, and his team couldn’t wait to show us their amazing crop.

The watermelon plants sprawl sideways, making a green mat of foliage, with the huge sentinel watermelons blending in until you’re up close.

When his team slice one open, you could see it a mile away.

Flavour, not yield

Oscar has worked on the family farm since childhood. They weren’t on a huge plot, and they could only grow enough to just about get by.

Growing up, he helped the farm to refocus on what it did best. Flavour, not yield. This brilliant land under a heavy sun was the perfect place to make perfect watermelons.

His team concentrated on methods that take more work, more care and attention. And the results speak for themselves.

The Sentinel watermelon

It starts with the distinctive, huge, Sentinel Watermelon. Avoided by most growers, they’re slow to grow and thin-skinned. But the long gestation period helps the melon to draw in minerals, building texture and flavour.

Oscar thins his melons to less than half the number of fruits that conventional growers allow. Vines are trained on raised beds and protected by sheeting; young shoots are pinched off so that the plant can channel nutrients into one, single fruit.

Timing is critical. With decades of experience, Oscar and his team know when a melon is at peak sweetness. He uses a colour-coded ribbon system to tag each fruit according to when it was pollinated, allowing him to track exactly how long it has ripened on the vine.

Sun and water

The Italian sun can scorch the delicate Sentinel skins. But Oscar has a way around that too. His team apply a chalk-based sunscreen to the fruits and leaves. It shields the melons from sunburn and allows them to ripen slowly.

At the same time, they are very careful with water intake. Clay soils hold nutrients but also trap water, and watermelons are natural sponges. Given the chance, they will soak up as much water as possible, diluting their flavour.

In a normal year, Oscar shields the plants from rain and raises the best fruits onto mounds so excess water drains away.

Out of the field

The result is very large watermelons, up to 18kg, with punchy sweetness and dense flesh. It’s an approach that makes the Sentinel the perfect match for our raw kombucha.

After picking, the watermelons move along a conveyor belt to be graded and checked. With a firm slap of the melon, they know everything they need by the sound it makes. They want a dull thud. They can detect even a tiny defect by a slight change in the noise.

After harvesting, he packs each fruit into a crate lined with straw so that the thin skins don’t bruise during transport. Painstaking handling is required to preserve the melons’ integrity from the field to your glass.

The delicious kombucha

For our limited-edition Zerbinati’s Watermelon Kombucha, Natoora deliver Oscar’s finest fruit at the height of the season and press the juice at their London site. Working with fruit at peak ripeness means every drop is sweet, fragrant and true to the melon’s character.

We blend that fresh juice with our raw kombucha, the watermelon’s clean sweetness balancing the tang and depth of our slow ferment.

It’s a mid-summer favourite. It’s here for a limited time only, and with 5p from every bottle going to Natoora’s Farm Fund to support the next generation of sustainable farmers, now’s the moment to enjoy it.