The growth in intensive production went hand in hand with an increasing attention to quality.
A new type of expert was now to be found in Reggio: the “maestro spiritaro” (spirit master) or “sfumatore” (blender): a person particularly skilled in handling and choosing the fruit, processing the peel and extracting the essence. A balance between demands for quantity and quality was finally achieved around the mid-19th century, thanks to a revolutionary new invention which made the process of manual extraction completely redundant.

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