New Initiatives Promote Olive Oil Culture in Northern Italy

Summary

Interest in extra vir­gin olive oil is grow­ing glob­ally, lead­ing to new ini­tia­tives such as L’Evo di Eva, an oleoteca in Turin, Italy, that pro­motes high-qual­ity pro­duc­ers through events, tast­ings, and col­lab­o­ra­tions. In Milan, the non-profit col­lec­tive Officina Enoica has expanded to include high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils, sup­port­ing pro­duc­ers and enthu­si­asts through social media posts, ded­i­cated web­site pages, and tast­ing events.

As inter­est in extra vir­gin olive oil grows glob­ally, new ini­tia­tives are being launched to pro­mote olive oil cul­ture and sup­port high-qual­ity pro­duc­ers. 

New olive oil-related projects have recently emerged in north­ern Italy, an area with increas­ing pro­duc­tion and a grow­ing num­ber of olive oil pro­fes­sion­als and enthu­si­asts.

In the heart of Turin, Piedmont’s cap­i­tal, Eva Collini opened L’Evo di Eva, the region’s first oleoteca – an Italian neol­o­gism for an olive oil shop. Its name is a play on words between the widely used acronym for extra vir­gin olive oil and her first name.

Along with high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil, the shop also offers olive oil-based prod­ucts, includ­ing oil-pre­served veg­eta­bles and table olives, as well as wines and olive oil-based cos­metic prod­ucts.

“We serve lunch and an aper­i­tif, and orga­nize sev­eral evening events with the pro­duc­ers,” Collini said. ​“Everything revolves around the extra vir­gin olive oil, which is always present, even dur­ing the wine events.” 

“Also, we orga­nize guided tast­ings and events with Italian schools for for­eign­ers, and we col­lab­o­rate with pro­ducer orga­ni­za­tions and insti­tu­tional bod­ies to spread the cul­ture of olive oil.”

Collini has recently been appointed one of the Maestri del Gusto (Masters of Taste) of Turin and its province by the Turin Chamber of Commerce, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with its chem­i­cal lab­o­ra­tory and Slow Food Italia.

Before becom­ing an olive pro­fes­sional and open­ing the oleoteca, Collini worked in the auto­mo­tive indus­try for 15 years. She dis­cov­ered her pas­sion for olive oil by chance while din­ing in a restau­rant in the his­tor­i­cal region of Langhe.

“While wait­ing for din­ner, I got a whiff of cut grass and other green notes. It was a lovely scent, and I thought it was com­ing from the kitchen,” she said.

However, Collini soon dis­cov­ered that the aro­mas came from a newly opened bot­tle of extra vir­gin olive oil brought to her table by the waiter and served in a small bowl for tast­ing.

“In that moment, a whole new world opened up to me,” she said. ​“Back home, I started sourc­ing the best olive oils I could find around.”

“At some point, there have been changes in my pro­fes­sional life,” Collini added. ​“It was my hus­band who moti­vated me to do some­thing on my own. He imme­di­ately said, ​‘Work with olive oil, since you love it so much,’ and so I decided to give it a try.” 

She began study­ing the olive oil mar­ket and dis­cov­ered that in Italy, there were only a few olive oil shops in the cen­tral and south­ern regions of the coun­try. 

Collini quickly deter­mined that an oleoteca in Turin was much needed. After attend­ing a series of tast­ing courses, she found the right spot down­town and opened the shop in August 2020, three months later than ini­tially planned due to the Covid-19 pan­demic restric­tions.

“From that moment on, this work has given me so much,” she said. ​“Furthermore, I never stopped train­ing, and I have become part of a tast­ing panel. I also recently attended a course for milling tech­ni­cians.”

Every day, on the shelves at L’Evo di Eva, vis­i­tors can find about 50 of the best Italian blends and mono­va­ri­etals from across the coun­try in rota­tion. There is also a selec­tion of oils made by a non-Italian pro­ducer.

Collini vis­its farms and attends trade fairs to select the best prod­ucts. She chooses each extra vir­gin olive oil not only for its qual­ity but also based on the vision behind it. 

As her com­pany thrives, more pro­duc­ers have pro­posed start­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tion, and Collini is already work­ing on the upcom­ing olive oil cam­paign.

“What I like most about this job is the expres­sions of the peo­ple when they sense the aro­mas,” she said, espe­cially from peo­ple new to or skep­ti­cal of olive oil tast­ing.

About two hours up the A4, in Milan, the cap­i­tal of neigh­bor­ing Lombardy, the non-profit col­lec­tive Officina Enoica is one of the lat­est nov­el­ties in the sec­tor. 

While its name refers to an oeno­log­i­cal work­shop, as it was founded to pro­mote arti­sanal wines, it has recently expanded to include high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils.

“We started just some months ago, but we are already hav­ing excel­lent feed­back from pro­duc­ers and enthu­si­asts,” said co-founder Giovanni Camocardi. 

With a group of friends, includ­ing pro­duc­ers, som­me­liers, wine lovers and small dis­trib­u­tors, he cre­ated an asso­ci­a­tion in 2009. Shortly after, they were invited by the munic­i­pal­ity of Asti to col­lab­o­rate on a wine event.

“The part­ner­ship with the town hall was sup­posed to last one year, but it ended up being longer, from 2010 to 2018,” Camocardi said. ​“Over time, our col­lec­tive has writ­ten some wine guides with Altraeconomia [an Italian pub­lish­ing house engaged in sol­i­dar­ity econ­omy], and orga­nized events, includ­ing big gath­er­ings with over 100 wine pro­duc­ers.”

“Our ini­tia­tive is non-profit, so we always keep the par­tic­i­pa­tion fees as low as pos­si­ble, and mem­ber­ship to our asso­ci­a­tion is free,” he added. 

A for­mer light­ing tech­ni­cian, before devot­ing him­self to the agri-food sec­tor, Camocardi worked for 40 years in the­aters, includ­ing pres­ti­gious venues such as La Scala in Milan.

“Thanks to my pre­vi­ous job, I trav­eled all over Italy, and this fueled a curios­ity about the dif­fer­ent foods,” he said. ​“I got to dis­cover agri-food excel­lences that were unknown else­where. This is easy today with the cur­rent means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but not back then. That expe­ri­ence allowed me to get closer to the farm­ing world.”

A defin­ing moment for Camocardi was when he met the renowned Italian gas­tronome Luigi Veronelli in 2000.

“We became friends and I took some pho­tos for his mag­a­zine,” he said. ​“Thanks to him, I devel­oped my pas­sion for wine. I under­stand the impor­tance of not only what is in the glass, but espe­cially of the peo­ple who make the prod­uct.”

“Veronelli then intro­duced me to extra vir­gin olive oil, with his focus on mono­va­ri­etals and pit­ted oils,” Camocardi added, lead­ing him to attend a tast­ing course. 

Since its incep­tion, the col­lec­tive had been exclu­sively ded­i­cated to arti­sanal wines, until a few months ago, when a wine pro­ducer asked the group to taste his extra vir­gin olive oil. Having appre­ci­ated the prod­uct, the col­lec­tive made a post about its organolep­tic pro­file on Instagram.

“After that post, we had had so many requests from high-qual­ity pro­duc­ers that we decided to reg­u­larly include extra vir­gin olive oils and olive grow­ers on our chan­nels,” Camocardi explained.

On the Officina Enoica’s web­site, in the sec­tion ded­i­cated to wine­mak­ers and olive grow­ers, the col­lec­tive cre­ates a page for each com­pany. 

In par­al­lel, the extra vir­gin olive oils are dis­played on the Officina Enoica’s Instagram page, along with wines. Each post usu­ally includes a photo of the bot­tle and a descrip­tion of the sen­sory pro­file.

“Just as we have com­mu­ni­cated arti­sanal wines so far, we are now doing it with extra vir­gin olive oils, too,” Camocardi said. ​“We are keen to sup­port young busi­nesses, which do not have the capa­bil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate their prod­ucts well.”

“We always start with the peo­ple; there must be a human story behind the prod­uct,” he added. ​“When a pro­ducer reaches out and asks us to taste a sam­ple, we tell them that we need to know the peo­ple who make the prod­uct.”

The collective’s head­quar­ters are in the Acquabella neigh­bor­hood, close to Milan’s city cen­ter. The asso­ciates usu­ally meet once a week to taste and dis­cuss the prod­ucts and the projects behind them.

“Several pro­duc­ers asked us to orga­nize tast­ing events like we already do with wine, and there­fore we are con­sid­er­ing this option for the next olive oil har­vest,” Camocardi said. 

“We could arrange meet­ings at our loca­tion, or in other venues, in Milan and all around Italy,” he added. We are now receiv­ing a great response from the olive oil pro­duc­ers. Their enthu­si­asm and the pas­sion they put into their work, as well as the qual­ity of the prod­ucts we are tast­ing, make us want to con­tinue to delve into and spread the olive oil cul­ture.”