New Rules in Italy Set Standards for Oleotourism Operators

New oppor­tu­ni­ties for tourism con­nected to extra vir­gin olive oil have come one step closer for Italian olive farm­ers and pro­duc­ers.

The gov­ern­ment has signed new tech­ni­cal rules, which offi­cials say will allow oleo­tourism to pros­per through­out Italy.

The rules come on the heels of oleo­touris­m’s inclu­sion in the national bud­get in 2020 and the meet­ings that fol­lowed among stake­hold­ers, includ­ing farm­ers’ and pro­duc­ers’ asso­ci­a­tions.

The new decree sets out a series of stan­dards that poten­tial oper­a­tors would need to meet to become a reg­is­tered oleo­tourism venue, includ­ing the space to offer tast­ings and the abil­ity to meet safety and san­i­tary reg­u­la­tions.

The stated goals of the new rules are to advance and pro­mote extra vir­gin olive oil cul­ture and serve as a new source of income for pro­duc­ers who have faced chal­leng­ing years due to extreme weather events, drought and the Covid-19 pan­demic.

The rules seek to estab­lish pro­fes­sional stan­dards among tourism oper­a­tors, while also serv­ing to define who will ben­e­fit from new funds ear­marked by the 2020 bud­get law.

The focus of the new act is specif­i­cally on extra vir­gin olive oil prod­ucts cer­ti­fied by the European Union with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) or Protected Geographical Indication (PGI).

Tourists will be offered the chance to learn about mak­ing and tast­ing extra vir­gin olive oil and expe­ri­ences such as par­tic­i­pat­ing in har­vest activ­i­ties man­aged by trained per­son­nel on the farms.

According to the new rules, tast­ings and courses may include small food prepa­ra­tions. Producers will also need to be acces­si­ble online using ded­i­cated web­sites writ­ten in Italian and at least one other lan­guage.

Some pro­duc­ers had asked for a qual­ity logo to be intro­duced to iden­tify and cer­tify only autho­rized oleo­tourism farm­houses, which the Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Agriculture plans to pro­mote, yet the details of such a cam­paign were not offered.

The new rules were greeted with enthu­si­asm by many in the indus­try.

“We are today cel­e­brat­ing news that we have been wait­ing for some time,” Michele Sonnessa, pres­i­dent of the Città dell’Olio asso­ci­a­tion, which coor­di­nates hun­dreds of munic­i­pal­i­ties in olive-pro­duc­ing ter­ri­to­ries, told Olive Oil Times.

Sonnessa added that the next steps in deploy­ing the ini­tia­tive sit with the regional author­i­ties.

“They now have the most rel­e­vant task, which is to adapt the local reg­u­la­tions to the guide­lines fixed by the decree about require­ments and qual­ity stan­dards for the new oleo­tourism activ­i­ties,” he said.

“For extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­ers, this means the chance to receive ded­i­cated train­ing and cre­ate an increas­ingly more qual­i­fied offer of food and expe­ri­ences,” Sonnessa added.

Together with other promi­nent farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­tions, such as Unaprol and Coldiretti, Città dell’Olio has just con­cluded the national olive oil tourism com­pe­ti­tion, which the Ministry of Agriculture had also pro­moted to high­light the best projects cur­rently in the field.

“It’s a small step for­ward, which will be fol­lowed by other ini­tia­tives in the spring such as Merenda nell’Oliveta, or next fal­l’s Olive Walk, a series of activ­i­ties to pro­mote the rich diver­sity and the oppor­tu­ni­ties of the olive oil world,” Sonnessa said.

Among the win­ners of this year’s com­pe­ti­tions was Alessandro Gilotti, the owner of the Passo Palomba farm, for his expe­ri­ence named Tutorial.

“It is tar­geted at the spe­cific back­grounds of those who come to our olive farm,” he told Olive Oil Times. ​“The first step hap­pens out­door among the olive trees, where tourists get in touch with the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the trees, their prun­ing, their cul­ti­vars.”

“The fact that hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent olive tree vari­eties have been grown by farm­ers every­where is always so inter­est­ing for our vis­i­tors,” Gilotti added, not­ing how oleo­tourists wel­come the wide vari­ety of expe­ri­ences.

“After the first con­tact with our trees, I bring them over to our small museum where they admire an old mill­stone, dated in the first years of the 18^th Century,” he con­tin­ued. ​“I show them a decanter from 1640, an exca­vated stone where the olive paste was poured. And I get to tell them about the ancient his­tory of the olive tree. Finally, I show them ancient jars used for trad­ing olive oil in the Mediterranean.”

The expe­ri­ence might dive deeper with dis­cus­sions of chem­istry and bio­chem­istry. A par­tic­u­lar focus is given to polyphe­nols and antiox­i­dants and how they build up in the olive dru­pes dur­ing ripen­ing.

“We also get to dis­cus­sions about the con­tain­ers and how they were in the past and how they are made today, when a given cul­ti­var should be har­vested and so on,” Gilotti added.

Gilotti is con­vinced that the expe­ri­ence can be espe­cially enrich­ing for chil­dren, allow­ing them to learn how extra vir­gin olive oil can play a role in their health as they grow.

“We play games with them,” Gilotti said. ​“One of those being a cas­tle with a princess. Extra vir­gin olive oil rep­re­sents the princess, and the cas­tle is rep­re­sented by a bot­tle. The draw­bridge is its cork.”

“In that sce­nario, the sol­diers are the polyphe­nols which have to pro­tect the princess from three mon­sters called light, high tem­per­a­tures and oxy­gen, the three ene­mies of high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils,” he added. ​“So they learn that the more sol­diers there are, the more the princess is pro­tected.”

Through the tast­ings, Gilotti said many dis­cover for the first time the dif­fer­ence between lower qual­ity olive oil and truly high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oils.

“At first, I let them smell dif­fer­ent aro­mas, such as those from pieces of apples, recently mowed grass, toma­toes or other extra vir­gin olive oil scents,” he said. ​“Then they smell some ran­cid olive oil, or oil with typ­i­cal defects, and that is when some­one comes up say­ing that the smell reminds him or her of the olive oil they are cur­rently using at home.”

“From there, I can teach them how to read a label cor­rectly, what kind of infor­ma­tion is there and I tell them the dif­fer­ence between olive oil types and qual­i­ties,” Gilotti added.

Gilotti said tourists describe the Tutorial expe­ri­ence as an ​“eye-opener” about olive oil.

“It ends with the tast­ing of our high-end mono­va­ri­etals, dis­cus­sions about what kind of extra vir­gin olive oil is best suited for spe­cific recipes and a brief visit to our own mod­ern olive oil mill,” he con­cluded. ​“After that, many of them buy our extra vir­gin olive oils.”

According to David Granieri, Unaprol’s pres­i­dent, oleo­tourism paves the way to a new age for Italian extra vir­gin olive oils.

“New, very inter­est­ing sce­nar­ios are open­ing up for the olive ter­ri­to­ries and pro­duc­ers,” he said. ​“We can give value to this extra­or­di­nary prod­uct directly reach­ing the con­sumers by nar­rat­ing sto­ries, bonds, emo­tions of the pro­duc­ers and from the pro­duc­tion ter­ri­to­ries.”

The House of Representatives Agricultural com­mis­sion pres­i­dent, Filippo Gallinella, added in a press release that these rules help sup­port the coun­tries myr­iad small farm­ers and pro­duc­ers who can­not always ​“ensure a suf­fi­cient income.”

“We pro­duce half the olive oil we con­sume, with rel­e­vant exports, but have small farms and many oil mills scat­tered through the ter­ri­tory,” he said. ​“If we start work­ing on mar­ket­ing poli­cies not focused on the shelf but cen­tered on the con­sumer, dredg­ing the con­sumers in the his­tory, taste and wide bio­di­ver­sity of our olive oils, then we will be able to ensure a decent income even to those who have just one hectare.”

“That is the big chal­lenge to give value to the work of the farmer, care­taker of his or her ter­ri­tory,” Gallinella con­cluded.

• Città dell’Olio
• Unaprol
• Aska News