Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons) are preserving jars made in Italy.
The jar mouth sizes come in regular mouth, wide mouth, and non-standard mouth.
The jars take screw-on lids.
The jars are, it appears, still actually made in Italy. They are made by Bormioli, whose headquarters are in Parma, Italy. Bormioli introduced the Quattro Stagioni line of jars sometime in the late 1970s / early 80s. [1]”La storia del vaso Quattro Stagioni iniza più di 40 anni fa.” Accessed August 2017 at https://shop.bormiolirocco.com/conservare/quattro-stagioni/vaso-quattro-stagioni-25-cl-con-capsula-2-pezzi.html
Here is a link to the Quattro Stagioni’s manufacturer’s home page .
Mouth sizes
Many of the Quattro Stagioni jar sizes will take standard mason jar lids and screw bands.
HealthyCanning.com passes the following information without re-verification at this point (summer 2015), as we haven’t had occasion to test it yet. A user on Linda Ziedrich’s site, A Gardner’s Table, has said that Tattler lids can be used on some, though not all, Quattro Stagioni jars [Ed: the commenter is speaking of Tattler lids, but Tattler lids are of course the same regular and wide mouth sizes as metal mason jar lids]:
The 1 liter jars and the 0.5 Anfora take wide-mouth ones, all the others require regular. The bottles and 0.15 jars use 56 mm dedicated caps obviously unavailable …. “
The commenter recommends to order some regular and wide-mouth canning jar screw-band rings from somewhere, to hold the Mason jar lids on during processing. He then gives some more detailed information about Quattro Stagioni jar mouth sizes.
- Regular size Ball or Tattler lids fit the 250 ml, 300 ml Anfora, and 500 ml jars [Ed: 70mm mouths]
- Wide Mouth lids fit the Anfora 500 ml, the 1 litre, and the 1.5 litre jars [ED: 86 / 88 mm mouths]
- Bottles (1 litre) and 150 ml jars require dedicated 56 mm lids made only for Quattro Stagioni jars.
The commenter concludes:
I use Tattlers with the 500ml, 300 ml, and 1 litre jars. The few one-use metal lids I’ve tried worked fine too. You’ll need the Mason screw bands, though.” [2] User comment 26 August 2012. Accessed March 2015.
Lid issue
The Quattro Stagioni jars themselves are fine for canning with. It’s the type of screw-on lids that they ship with which could be an issue for some.
One-piece metal screw-on lids (aka “Twist-top lids”) such as those that ship with the Quattro Stagioni (QS) jars are not currently not endorsed for home canning. In fact, they are recommended specifically against by North American authorities:
Can I use one piece canning lids for home canning? No. One piece screw type canning lids are not designed or approved for home canning use. This type of lid is used in food processing as a hot-fill-hold process under very strict time and temperature controls. In home-canning a two-piece lid is needed to let the air escape during the boiling water or pressure canning process. A one-piece lid doesn’t allow the air to escape resulting in blowing out the bottom of the jar or the lid to buckle.” [3] Driessen, Suzanne. Food Preservation FAQs. University of Minnesota Extension. 2014. Accessed June 2015 at https://www.extension.umn.edu/food/food-safety/preserving/general/food-preservation-faqs/.
As well, with such a one-piece lid, the home canning experts say there is no way to test whether you have a seal that will keep the food inside safe without actually opening the jar, and breaking any seal that might have happened. Some one-piece lids admittedly do have “buttons” stamped into the metal, which are designed to help indicate if there is a seal or not, but they don’t deem that sufficient. Nor does such a lid provide any way to tell if a hermetic seal has been consistently maintained throughout shelf storage. So, the experts say, one-piece lids are fine for dry storage, or refrigerator or freezer storage: just not for shelf-stable canning use. For more info on this debate, see: One-piece metal screw-on lids .
A “8 piece” Quattro Stagioni set. Note that “8 piece” is somewhat misleading. You do not get 8 jars. You get 4 jars, and 4 one-piece lids.
Note as well that these one-piece Quattro Stagioni metal lids are not supported for use in pressure canning, only hot water bath canning: “The Quattro Stagioni capsules are designed for use with hot water (max temperature 100 °) and not for use in the oven or pressure tank.” [4] https://myhome.bormioliroccocasa.com/myhome/en/home/catalog/quattro-stagioni/Tips/questions-answers.html. Quattro Stagioni FAQ. Accessed March 2015. Note that the restriction mentioned is on the lids aka caps; they say in Italian ‘capsule’, which means ‘caps.’ ‘Le capsule Quattro Stagioni sono progettate per essere usate in acqua bollente (a una temperatura massima di 100°) e non per utilizzi in forno o autoclave.”
Filled Quattro Stagioni jars (note: to meet North American recommendations, 2 piece Mason jar lids should have been used instead.) Credit: Gianni Crestani / Pixabay.com / 2014 / CC0 1.0
References
AB
Hello! Reading the article, my understanding is that the jars themselves are fine to use in a pressure canner, it’s only the one-piece lids that need to be replaced. Is that correct? These jars are easier to come by where I am at, and so I really hope I understood this correctly.
Healthy Canning
Correct, the jars themselves are fine.
North American guidelines do prefer two-piece lid usage for several operational reasons. It’s not that the one-piece lids are unsafe; it’s that it’s felt people can’t tell as easily if a true seal has happened or held — middle dimples don’t seem to always be reliable, or people don’t always know how to “read” them correctly. The two-piece lids are both super easy for people to test seals with, and affordable in North America, so that makes it easy for home canning professionals there to prefer that people use those.
What’s more important than the type of closure system on a jar is that safe, modern, research-tested recipes and processes are being used. (We’re quoting “So Easy to Preserve” on this, for anyone who thinks this is heresy.) If the processing wasn’t right, then the lid type won’t matter a hill of beans. But if one-piece lids are all you can get affordably where you live, then you’d need to learn how to be extra vigilant in observing them to make sure seals have happened. (Two-piece lids can cost a buck or more a lid in Europe, making their use very problematic, we realize.) See here for a discussion. https://www.healthycanning.com/one-piece-lids-for-home-canning/
AB
Thank you for the prompt and detailed response! Good news, then!
J.D. Abercrombie
What metal (?) is used to make the lids? I assume the jars are
safe in terms of the glass used to make them. But what about the lids?
Aluminum? Steel? Any harmful materials?
jda
Gordon Conaway
Thanks for collecting the very helpful info, not easy to find!
Robin T
Do you know where I can purchase the lids for the 1 liter bottles?
Healthy Canning
Sorry, don’t know off the top of our heads. Try Amazon.
Bela
amazon
Sharvo
Good info! And explains why the 56 mm lids are now up to $10 apiece on the web.
Martin
Hello from Luxembourg (Europe)
First great job you are doing here, thank you for the lot of info’s.
If you can get Quattro stagioni jars from Bormioli Rocco in Italy, you would have the advantage that you use big mouth lids and rings from the Ball jars.
These jars are very well made and tough, Ball jars are very expensive to buy over here, but I use the lids and rings from Ball or Kerr because it’s still cheaper then to use the Bormioli Rocco lids.
Hope that you could use this info.
Best wishes from Luxembourg
Martin